Python is inserting newline characters into requests header - django

Question

Some background. This code takes a data from a data collection script and then posts it to a secured REST API in Django. I have an api key generated and it is the only line in the file api.key. I also have the url to post to in the file post.url (it looks like http://example.com/api/ and then I concatenate the proper api node name on the end).
The code is below for my solar data api node (posts data collected from solar panels)
import gather_solar as gs
import requests
import json
import os
def post_solar():
print("DEBUG: start solar")
data = gs.gather_solar()
api_key = None
url = None
try:
here = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
filename = os.path.join(here, 'api.key')
file = open(filename, "r")
api_key = file.readline()
api_key.replace('\n', '')
except Exception as e:
print("ERROR: " + str(e))
try:
here = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
filename = os.path.join(here, 'post.url') #server will use different url
file = open(filename, "r")
url = file.readline()
url.replace('\n', '')
except Exception as e:
print("ERROR: " + str(e))
if api_key is not None and url is not None:
authorization = "Token " + api_key
authorization.replace('\n', '')
headers = {
'Content-Type': 'application/json; charset=UTF-8',
'Authorization': authorization
}
json_data = json.dumps(data)
url += "solar/"
url.replace('\n', '')
print(url)
req = requests.Request('POST', url, data=json_data, headers=headers)
prepared = req.prepare()
print("DEBUG: POST Headers: " + str(prepared.headers))
print("DEBUG: POST Body: " + str(prepared.body))
s = requests.Session()
response = s.send(prepared)
print("DEBUG: Response Code: " + str(response.status_code))
print("DEBUG: Response Headers: " + str(response.headers))
print("DEBUG: Response Data: " + str(response.json()))
else:
print("DEBUG: Error with API key")
print("DEBUG: end solar")
I am running code on an ubuntu server via AWS and have Apache 2 setup and running. However, whenever I run this script, I get an error saying that my token is invalid and it shows the token as "Token abcd...abcd\n" . This is especially frustrating because I don't have this issue when I run the script locally (visual studio code on Win10) As you can see I have tried to remove any newlines wherever possible but it doesn't seem to be helping. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

replace() does not change the string (strings are immutable); it returns a new string. So:
api_key = file.readline()
api_key.replace('\n', '')
leaves the \n on api_key and you are ignoring the new string returned by replace().
You could just string the line before assignment:
api_key = file.readline().strip()