How to use variable's value as HTTP POST parameter?

Question

I am trying to send HTTP post request to an API, but instead of using preset text values as POST data, I am trying to use the variables, but can't seems to figure out how to do this?

This is the code:

url1 = "https://example.com/api/req"
headers = CaseInsensitiveDict()
headers["Content-Type"] = "application/json"
data = """
{
    "type": "Direction",
    "station": "Dept",
    "status": "check",
    "values": {
        "Par1": "5",
        "Par2" : "2",
        "Par3": "3",
        "Par4": "1",
        "Par5": "4"
    }
}
"""
resp1 = requests.post(url1, headers=headers, data=data)

So Instead of using the something like "type": "Direction" I am trying to use "type": Variable_1.

How can one achieve this?

Answer 1

You can use an f-string (as long as you are using Python 3.7+).

url1 = "https://example.com/api/req"
headers = CaseInsensitiveDict()
headers["Content-Type"] = "application/json"
Variable_1 = "Direction"
data = f"""
{{
    "type": "{Variable_1}",
    "station": "Dept",
    "status": "check",
    "values": {{
        "Par1": "5",
        "Par2" : "2",
        "Par3": "3",
        "Par4": "1",
        "Par5": "4"
    }}
}}
"""
resp1 = requests.post(url1, headers=headers, data=data)

Answer 2

As @CaiAllin points out, you can just pass requests a Python dictionary like this:

import json
import requests
from requests.structures import CaseInsensitiveDict

url1 = "https://example.com/api/req"
headers = CaseInsensitiveDict()
headers["Content-Type"] = "application/json"

type_ = "Direction"
station = "Dept"
status = "check"
values = {
    "Par1": "5",
    "Par2": "2",
    "Par3": "3",
    "Par4": "1",
    "Par5": "4",
}

data = {
    "type": type_,
    "station": station,
    "status": status,
    "values": values,
}

resp1 = requests.post(url1, headers=headers, data=json.dumps(data))