How do I add newlines when editing a post body via the API?

Question

I am editing the tags of a question via the API, and to do that you have to pass the body and title etc.

I can get the Markdown or HTML from the API but I can't see how to send it back formatted properly.

These revisions pretty much show what I've tried:

\n\r. Didn't work (rev 4).
<br><br>, as given by the API Markdown. Didn't work (rev 6).
<p>...</p>, as given by the API HTML. Works (rev 8), but boy does that question Markdown look ugly.
designed%20for%20the%20following%20 - URL encode. Didn't work (rev 9).
%0A%0A replacing \n\r. Didn't work (rev 12).

So how do I edit it neatly?

Even direct copy / paste from the source page into the body box gives bad results.

Sequence matters. It should be \r\n and the string should have the hex bytes 0x0D, 0x0A (before form encoding). Make sure you escape (or don't) the `\`s properly for whatever language you are using. — Brock Adams
– Brock Adams, Commented May 27, 2015 at 11:10
The form encoded string that your app sends should contain %0D%0A bits. If it has %250D%250A, you're miss/over encoding. What language are you using? For most languages, it's just \r\n in a plain ASCII string. — Brock Adams
– Brock Adams, Commented May 27, 2015 at 11:16
@BrockAdams Python. The API is saying I'm calling it wrong now, but when I use the body box on the api page, it gives messy code: askubuntu.com/revisions/374644/22 — Tim
– Tim, Commented May 27, 2015 at 11:35
@BrockAdams thanks :) Worked it out now - I was using a get request. \r\n works perfectly! — Tim
– Tim, Commented May 27, 2015 at 12:00
btw @Tim you could use The API Sandbox for editing... Or the Formatting Sandbox :) — ᔕᖺᘎᕊ
– ᔕᖺᘎᕊ, Commented May 27, 2015 at 15:13
@ᔕᖺᘎᕊ I did consider it, but I wanted to keep it getting the questions from the search, so it had to be one that came up there. Will do in the future! — Tim
– Tim, Commented May 27, 2015 at 15:14
@Tim no problem :) just a suggestion! (it's good the load-of-edits community-wiki conversion has gone now! :) — ᔕᖺᘎᕊ
– ᔕᖺᘎᕊ, Commented May 27, 2015 at 15:15
You should post an answer here (or delete this Q). Include an example of the Python code you ended up using. — Brock Adams
– Brock Adams, Commented May 27, 2015 at 20:26

Brock Adams · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-27 21:43:27Z

The \r\n issue was solved when I changed to a POST request.

But, since I was retagging questions (didn't really need to change the body, just resend it), I ended up using the body_markdown, encoded with HTMLParser.HTMLParser().unescape()

body_markdown = str(HTMLParser.HTMLParser().unescape(question_data['items'][0]['body_markdown']))

And then sending it with:

response = requests.post('https://api.stackexchange.com/2.2/questions/'+str(q_id)+'/edit', data={'body': body_markdown, 'comment': 'removed '+tag+' tag', 'tags': ' '.join(tags), 'title': title, 'access_token': token, 'site': site, 'key': key } )

Stack Exchange Network

How do I add newlines when editing a post body via the API?

1 Answer 1

You must log in to answer this question.

Linked

Hot Network Questions

How do I add newlines when editing a post body via the API?

1 Answer 1

You must log in to answer this question.

Linked

Related

Hot Network Questions