Posting data submissions using the KOBO Rest API

[Hussein_Lightwalla]

Hello,

I’m having trouble forming the HTTP request in a correct format as expected for submitting data using the KOBO REST API. I’m trying to this from.net (C#). Could someone please assist me with a simple example of a code snippet of what this would look like?

Thank you!

Hussein

[Tino_Kreutzer]

Hi Hussein,
Are you trying to POST an XML or a JSON submission? There are some examples in our API documentation.

If you’ve tried the examples on https://kc.kobotoolbox.org/api/v1/submissions unsuccessfully, could you paste your snippet so we can help troubleshoot?

Best,

Tino

···

On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 4:38 AM Hussein Lightwalla hussein.l...@kimetrica.com wrote:

Hello,

I’m having trouble forming the HTTP request in a correct format as expected for submitting data using the KOBO REST API. I’m trying to this from.net (C#). Could someone please assist me with a simple example of a code snippet of what this would look like?

Thank you!

Hussein

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[Hussein_Lightwalla]

Hey Tino,

Thanks for your reply. I’ve managed to submit data via CSV files as follows:

var client = new RestClient("https://kc.kobotoolbox.org/api/v1/forms/{pk}/csv_import");
client.Authenticator = new HttpBasicAuthenticator("user_name", "password");
client.AddDefaultUrlSegment("pk", "31045");
string file_path = Server.MapPath("~/myform.csv");
var request = new RestRequest(Method.POST);
request.AddFile("csv_file", file_path);
IRestResponse response = client.Execute(request);

but I still find it difficult with either JSON or XML. I think the main challenge is figuring out how exactly the XML file should be structured or how the JSON should be structured.

Thanks!

···

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 6:56:31 PM UTC+3, Tino Kreutzer wrote:

Hi Hussein,
Are you trying to POST an XML or a JSON submission? There are some examples in our API documentation.

If you’ve tried the examples on https://kc.kobotoolbox.org/api/v1/submissions unsuccessfully, could you paste your snippet so we can help troubleshoot?

Best,

Tino

On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 4:38 AM Hussein Lightwalla hussein.l...@kimetrica.com wrote:

Hello,

I’m having trouble forming the HTTP request in a correct format as expected for submitting data using the KOBO REST API. I’m trying to this from.net (C#). Could someone please assist me with a simple example of a code snippet of what this would look like?

Thank you!

Hussein

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[Tino_Kreutzer]

Hi Hussein,

For importing XML, did you try using the exact format of XML created by KoBoCollect? The default format is

<?xml version='1.0' ?> <your_form_id id="your_form_id"> <formhub><uuid>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</uuid></formhub><q1>some text</q1><q2>some text</q2><meta><instanceID>uuid:yyyyyyyyy</instanceID></meta> </your_form_id>

Best,
Tino

···

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 7:37 AM Hussein Lightwalla hussein.l...@kimetrica.com wrote:

Hey Tino,

Thanks for your reply. I’ve managed to submit data via CSV files as follows:

var client = new RestClient("[https://kc.kobotoolbox.org/api/v1/forms/{pk}/csv_import](https://kc.kobotoolbox.org/api/v1/forms/%7Bpk%7D/csv_import)");
client.Authenticator = new HttpBasicAuthenticator("user_name", "password");
client.AddDefaultUrlSegment("pk", "31045");
string file_path = Server.MapPath("~/myform.csv");
var request = new RestRequest(Method.POST);
request.AddFile("csv_file", file_path);
IRestResponse response = client.Execute(request);

but I still find it difficult with either JSON or XML. I think the main challenge is figuring out how exactly the XML file should be structured or how the JSON should be structured.

Thanks!

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 6:56:31 PM UTC+3, Tino Kreutzer wrote:

Hi Hussein,
Are you trying to POST an XML or a JSON submission? There are some examples in our API documentation.

If you’ve tried the examples on https://kc.kobotoolbox.org/api/v1/submissions unsuccessfully, could you paste your snippet so we can help troubleshoot?

Best,

Tino

On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 4:38 AM Hussein Lightwalla hussei...@kimetrica.com wrote:

Hello,

I’m having trouble forming the HTTP request in a correct format as expected for submitting data using the KOBO REST API. I’m trying to this from.net (C#). Could someone please assist me with a simple example of a code snippet of what this would look like?

Thank you!

Hussein

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[Hussein_Lightwalla]

Hey Tino,

I’ll give this a shot. Thanks!

Kind regards,

Hussein

···

On Wednesday, December 30, 2015 at 7:24:03 PM UTC+3, Tino Kreutzer wrote:

Hi Hussein,

For importing XML, did you try using the exact format of XML created by KoBoCollect? The default format is

<?xml version='1.0' ?> <your_form_id id="your_form_id"> <formhub><uuid>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx</uuid></formhub><q1>some text</q1><q2>some text</q2><meta><instanceID>uuid:yyyyyyyyy</instanceID></meta> </your_form_id>

Best,
Tino

On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 7:37 AM Hussein Lightwalla hussein.l...@kimetrica.com wrote:

Hey Tino,

Thanks for your reply. I’ve managed to submit data via CSV files as follows:

var client = new RestClient("[https://kc.kobotoolbox.org/api/v1/forms/{pk}/csv_import](https://kc.kobotoolbox.org/api/v1/forms/%7Bpk%7D/csv_import)");
client.Authenticator = new HttpBasicAuthenticator("user_name", "password");
client.AddDefaultUrlSegment("pk", "31045");
string file_path = Server.MapPath("~/myform.csv");
var request = new RestRequest(Method.POST);
request.AddFile("csv_file", file_path);
IRestResponse response = client.Execute(request);

but I still find it difficult with either JSON or XML. I think the main challenge is figuring out how exactly the XML file should be structured or how the JSON should be structured.

Thanks!

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 6:56:31 PM UTC+3, Tino Kreutzer wrote:

Hi Hussein,
Are you trying to POST an XML or a JSON submission? There are some examples in our API documentation.

If you’ve tried the examples on https://kc.kobotoolbox.org/api/v1/submissions unsuccessfully, could you paste your snippet so we can help troubleshoot?

Best,

Tino

On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 4:38 AM Hussein Lightwalla hussei...@kimetrica.com wrote:

Hello,

I’m having trouble forming the HTTP request in a correct format as expected for submitting data using the KOBO REST API. I’m trying to this from.net (C#). Could someone please assist me with a simple example of a code snippet of what this would look like?

Thank you!

Hussein

–

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups “Kobo Users” group.

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[ks_1]

I’m having some trouble submitting data programmatically using JSON. I imagine it is because I’m not constructing the JSON properly. Here’s my script for a form that has a single question “Name_Entered”:

import requests

headers = {"Content-Type": "application/json",
           'Authorization': 'Token <MY_TOKEN>'
           }
json = {
        "Name_Entered": "Test",
        "meta": {
            "instanceID": "uuid:8992c3c2-3418-4ba9-a8e2-b00e03ea36b6"
        }
    }

data = {"id": "<MY_FORM_ID>", "submission": json}
response = requests.post("https://<KC URL>/api/v1/submissions.json", data=data, headers=headers)

print(response.text)

I get the following response:
{"detail":"JSON parse error - No JSON object could be decoded"}

Can someone guide me?

[Josh]

Hi @ks_1, unfortunately submitting data with JSON can be unpredictable — I’m also battling. I would recommend rather using XML as that’s how we handle it on the backend. You can see how we handled submission duplication here.

It isn’t pretty, but I adapted what I did there to try and meet your current need. You’ll just need to adjust things to make it work for you and likely use Python’s xml.etree library as I did to programmatically update the xml tree. In this example I’ve just used the submission’s XML structure as a template (you can see that if you navigate to /api/v2/assets/{asset_uid}/data.xml)

You can give this a try:

import io
import requests
import uuid
from datetime import datetime

BASE_URL = 'https://kc.kobotoolbox.org'
SUMISSION_URL = f'{BASE_URL}/api/v1/submissions'
TOKEN = '<TOKEN>'

def format_openrosa_datetime():
    return datetime.now().isoformat('T', 'milliseconds')

def create_xml_submission(data, _uuid):
    return f'''
    <atewgEAX2sG2ibzvs6dTHV id="atewgEAX2sG2ibzvs6dTHV" version="1 (2021-03-25 18:06:48)">
        <formhub>
            <uuid>8db71a06863349c6abe8bb5edf6d4b4e</uuid>
        </formhub>
        <start>{format_openrosa_datetime()}</start>
        <end>{format_openrosa_datetime()}</end>
        <answer_me>{data}</answer_me>
        <__version__>vWG8dR5D2BhooJjhQ8zrqy</__version__>
        <meta>
            <instanceID>uuid:{_uuid}</instanceID>
        </meta>
    </atewgEAX2sG2ibzvs6dTHV>
    '''.encode()

def submit_data(data):
    _uuid = str(uuid.uuid4())
    file_tuple = (_uuid, io.BytesIO(create_xml_submission(data, _uuid)))
    files = {'xml_submission_file': file_tuple}
    headers = {'Authorization': f'Token {TOKEN}'}
    res = requests.Request(
        method='POST', url=SUMISSION_URL, files=files, headers=headers
    )
    session = requests.Session()
    res = session.send(res.prepare())

    if res.status_code == 201:
        return 'Success 🎉'
    return 'Something went wrong 😢'

if __name__ == '__main__':
    res = submit_data('hello world')
    print(res)

If you enter your token there it should send data to my form.

[ks_1]

@Josh

You can give this a try:

Thanks, it works!!
How do I send attachments? File/photo etc?

[Josh]

@ks_1 you can submit files the same way by just extending the submit_data() method above. Something like this:

def submit_data(data, file_name):
    ...
    another_file_tuple = (file_name, open(file_name, 'rb'))
    files = {'xml_submission_file': file_tuple, file_name: another_file_tuple}
    ...

Note that if you look at the network tab in your browser dev tools while submitting data through Enketo, the request data will give you a rough idea how to do what you’re wanting.

[ks_1]

Thanks a lot @Josh… You’re a lifesaver.

[Mavee]

It doesn’t work for me.
return error 404

[ralphthompson]

I combined this with an excel file to allow for forms with different heading labels, see here:

Python script to batch upload old data to a new form or account (including images too)

Hi, I wanted to share a script I’ve been working on that allows data to be batch uploaded to the kobo server. It can transfer all the data including images from a kobo export to a new form / account, even if the new form has a different layout (headings / groups have different names). This is a more flexible extrension of what josh described here: I’m not at all a programmer so its kindof hacky… but it works The forum server wont let me upload py or text files so I’ll copy t…

Thanks for the inspiration!

[Kal_Lam]

@ralphthompson,

[omaralafa]

That’s great, could you share with us an example for sharing multiple images

[oluwaseun_ogunmolu]

Thank you; it works. Now my question is, if I have name and age, how can I pass the data?