Printing a list from a dictionary in an api: string error

Question

I've written a function to search for a recipe in an API and print the ingredients(code below). I get an error message (see ## in text for problematic line) saying that list indices must be integers or slices, not str. The examples I have been given seem to use strings, so I'm not sure why it won't work in my code. Any help greatly appreciated! Sophie

def get_chosen_recipe():
    chosen_recipe = input("What recipe do you want to cook? ")
    app_id = "<my app id>"
    app_key = "<my app key>"
    url = 'https://api.edamam.com/search?q={}&app_id={}&app_key={}'.format(chosen_recipe, app_id, app_key)
    response = requests.get(url)
    response.raise_for_status() # Raises error code if unsuccessful http request
    choice = response.json()
    ingredients = choice['hits']['recipe']['ingredientLines'] ## THIS LINE CAUSES THE ERROR
    if chosen_recipe:
        return pprint(ingredients)
    else:
        return print("No ingredients found. Please try a different recipe.")

Answer 1

The error message you are getting is a TypeError: list indices must be integers or slices, not str. This is due to trying to access a list as if it were a dictionary. In the API response, choice['hits'] is a list of recipe hits, not a single recipe object. Each item in this list is a dictionary representing a recipe, which includes another dictionary accessed by the key 'recipe'.

Instead, you would need to first select an item from the hits list before you can access its 'recipe' dictionary, like so:

ingredients = choice['hits'][0]['recipe']['ingredientLines']