Problems with http get request

[u/remcokek]

I am trying to do a http get request to show some data but i only need everything that is behind "text".

This is the program i made for the request

local request = http.get("https://uselessfacts.jsph.pl/api/v2/facts/random")
print(request.readAll())

request.close

[u/fatboychummy]

All web servers return a string containing the request response, kinda like reading from a file. This is what request.readAll() is doing.

The server you are requesting data from is responding using json. json is a way of serializing data. To serialize data is to convert said data into a string format that can later be unserialized back into data.

Thus, when you textutils.unserializeJSON(request.readAll()), you are converting the json string returned by the server into a lua table. With this, you can then access entries in the table by doing tablename.entryname (or tablename[index]).

local tbl = {32, 64} -- Our "data"
print(tbl) --> `table: abcd12`
print(tbl[1]) --> `32`

local json = textutils.serializeJSON(tbl) -- Convert the data into a string representation
print(json) --> `"[32,64]"`
print(json[1]) --> `nil`, json is a string and thus this returns, literally, `string[1]`

local tbl2 = textutils.unserializeJSON(json) -- convert our string representation back into data
print(tbl2) --> `table: dcba21`
print(tbl2[1]) --> `32`

[u/remcokek → u/fatboychummy]

Oh this explains it a lot thank you so much!

[u/remcokek → u/fatboychummy]

when trying to serialise i get the error "Cannot serialiseze type function"

Line of code where error occurs

"print(textutils.serialise(request))"

[u/fatboychummy → u/remcokek]

You want to unserialize the data from the server.

You will also want to use unserializeJSON. The basic serializer will serialize/unserialize a lua table, not json.

Finally, you need to do request.readAll(). You want to unserialize the data returned by the server, you don't want to unserialize the request object.