HTTPError: HTTP Error 401: basic auth failed. Bing Search

Question

I have made a code to get urls from bing search. It gives the error mentioned above.

import urllib
import urllib2
accountKey = 'mykey'
username =accountKey
queryBingFor = "'JohnDalton'"
quoted_query = urllib.quote(queryBingFor)

rootURL = "https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/Search/"
searchURL = rootURL + "Image?$format=json&Query=" + quoted_query
password_mgr = urllib2.HTTPPasswordMgrWithDefaultRealm()
password_mgr.add_password(None, searchURL,username,accountKey)

handler = urllib2.HTTPBasicAuthHandler(password_mgr)
opener = urllib2.build_opener(handler)
urllib2.install_opener(opener)
readURL = urllib2.urlopen(searchURL).read()

I have made the username = authKey as someone told me it has to be same for both. Anyways, i didn't get a username when i made the bing webmaster account. Or is it just my email. Excuse me if i have made novice mistakes. I've just started Python.

Answer 1

In the absence of any other information, it seems unlikely that what is effectively your username and password would be the same thing if this site actually needs this form of authorisation.

Are you able to make it work by doing a request in your browser like the following?

https://mykey:mykey@api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/Search/Image?$format=json&Query=blah

If so then at lerast it sounds like the credentials are right and that its the way you are using them in python that's wrong, but more likely the above will fail with the same error, suggesting the credentials themselves are not valid.

Also see this question, which suggests there may be a problem is the site doesn't do 'standard' auth: urllib2 HTTPPasswordMgr not working - Credentials not sent error

It also suggests that you might need to pass the top level URL of the site tot he password manager rather than the specific search URL.

Finally, it might be worth adapting this code: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/articles/authentication.shtml

for your site to check the auth realm and scheme the site is sending you to check they're supported.