Wierd Behavior When Using Python requests.put() with Flask - flask

Question

Background
I have a service A accessible with HTTP requests. And I have other services that want to invoke these APIs.
Problem
When I test service A's APIs with POSTMAN, every request works fine. But when I user python's requests library to make these request, there is one PUT method that just won't work. For some reason, the PUT method being called cannot receive the data (HTTP body) at all, though it can receive headers. On the other side, the POST method called in the same manner receives the data perfectly.
I managed to achieve my goal simply by using httplib library instead, but I am still quite baffled by what exactly happened here.
The Crime Scene
Route 1:
#app.route("/private/serviceA", methods = ['POST'])
#app.route("/private/serviceA/", methods = ['POST'])
def A_create():
# request.data contains correct data that can be read with request.get_json()
Route 2:
#app.route("/private/serviceA/<id>", methods = ['PUT'])
#app.route("/private/serviceA/<id>/", methods = ['PUT'])
def A_update(id):
# request.data is empty, though request.headers contains headers I passed in
# This happens when sending the request with Python requests library, but not when sending with httplib library or with POSTMAN
# Also, data comes in fine when all other routes are commented out
# Unless all other routes are commented out, this happens even when the function body has only one line printing request.data
Route 3:
#app.route("/private/serviceA/schema", methods = ['PUT'])
def schema_update_column():
# This one again works perfectly fine
Using POSTMAN:
Using requests library from another service:
#app.route("/public/serviceA/<id>", methods = ['PUT'])
def A_update(id):
content = request.get_json()
headers = {'content-type': 'application/json'}
response = requests.put('%s:%s' % (router_config.HOST, serviceA_instance_id) + '/private/serviceA/' + str(id), data=json.dumps(content), headers = headers)
return Response(response.content, mimetype='application/json', status=response.status_code)
Using httplib library from another service:
#app.route('/public/serviceA/<id>', methods=['PUT'])
def update_course(id):
content= request.get_json()
headers = {'content-type': 'application/json'}
conn = httplib.HTTPConnection('%s:%s' % (router_config.HOST, serviceA_instance_id))
conn.request("PUT", "/private/serviceA/%s/" % id, json.dumps(content), headers)
return str(conn.getresponse().read())
Questions
1. What am I doing wrong for the route 2?
2. For route 2, the handler doesn't seem to be executed when either handler is commented out, which also confuses me. Is there something important about Flask that I'm not aware of?
Code Repo
Just in case some nice ppl are interested enough to look at the messy undocumented code...
https://github.com/fantastic4ever/project1
The serviceA corresponds to course service (course_flask.py), and the service calling it corresponds to router service (router.py).
The version that was still using requests library is 747e69a11ed746c9e8400a8c1e86048322f4ec39.

Answer 1

In your use of the requests library, you are using requests.post, which is sending a POST request. If you use requests.put then you would send a PUT request. That could be the issue.
Request documentation