No 204 HTTP status code after exceeding public API request rate limit, but just an empty response

[Sander Jonkers]

The virustotal documentations says "Whenever you exceed the public API request rate limit a 204 HTTP status code is returned. ".

However, on the 5th check, I just get an empty response.

Code:

        try:

                req = urllib2.Request(url, data)

                response = urllib2.urlopen(req)

                VTjson = response.read()

except:

print "not good"

print "Start", VTjson, "End"

I would expect an exception on the 5th run, but that does not happen; I just get an empty VTjson.

What are others' experiences?

[Emiliano Martinez]

Hello Sander,

You get an empty response precisely because you are being rate limited, the body is empty and among the HTTP headers you will find a 204 HTTP status code. Status code travels in the headers of the HTTP protocol, not in its body.

Regards.

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[Sander Jonkers]

Ah! It doesn't cause a Python exception... Ah, I changed the code to this:

try:

req = urllib2.Request(url, data)

response = urllib2.urlopen(req)

VTjson = response.read()

print "HTTP code is", response.getcode()

... and the result is now as expected:

HTTP code is 200

(True, u' DOS.EiracA.Trojan EICAR-Test-File EICAR-Test-File EICAR.TestFile EICAR test file', 45)

HTTP code is 204

Empty info ...

Something went wrong decoding the JSON info ... over your limit? No JSON object could be decoded

Thank you!