ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded

[Tushar Sharma]

 Internal Server Error: /courses/abc/CS101/2014_T12/discussion/forum
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/edx/app/edxapp/venvs/edxapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 111, in get_response
    response = callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)
  File "/edx/app/edxapp/venvs/edxapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/contrib/auth/decorators.py", line 20, in _wrapped_view
    return view_func(request, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/edx/app/edxapp/edx-platform/lms/djangoapps/django_comment_client/forum/views.py", line 175, in forum_form_discussion
    unsafethreads, query_params = get_threads(request, course_id)   # This might process a search query
  File "/edx/app/edxapp/venvs/edxapp/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/newrelic-2.4.0.4/newrelic/api/function_trace.py", line 85, in literal_wrapper
    return wrapped(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/edx/app/edxapp/edx-platform/lms/djangoapps/django_comment_client/forum/views.py", line 50, in get_threads
    cc_user.retrieve()
  File "/edx/app/edxapp/edx-platform/lms/lib/comment_client/models.py", line 59, in retrieve
    self._retrieve(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/edx/app/edxapp/edx-platform/lms/lib/comment_client/user.py", line 83, in _retrieve
    response = perform_request('get', url, retrieve_params)
  File "/edx/app/edxapp/edx-platform/lms/lib/comment_client/utils.py", line 90, in perform_request
    return json.loads(response.text)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 328, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 365, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 383, in raw_decode
    raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded

[Greg Price]

It looks like there is either a bug in cs_comments_service that is causing it to return invalid JSON or it's returning an HTTP status code that the LMS is not anticipating. Can you look at the cs_comments_service log to determine what status code is returned when this error is raised?