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pythonapiurllib2http-status-code-403

CiteULike API 'forbidden'


I am trying to query counts of bookmarks for research papers in CiteULike. I am using the "http://www.citeulike.org/api/posts/for/doi/" URL in order to put in a request (using urllib2 library for Python) for an XML document which contains information on the bookmarks for a given DOI (unique identifier for papers). However I keep getting a HTTP 403 Error: Forbbiden.

Does anyone know why I am getting this error? I've tried putting the URL with the DOI in the browser and that returns the XML just fine, so the problem seems related to my automated requests.

Thanks, Nathanael


Solution

  • You should read http://wiki.citeulike.org/index.php/Importing_and_Exporting#Scripting_CiteULike

    If you access CiteULike via an automated process, you MUST provide a means to identify yourself via the User-Agent string. Please use "<username>/<email> <application>" e.g., "fred/[email protected] myscraper/1.0". Any scripting of the site without a means to identify you may result in a block.