allow for passing directly the python dict string as response body

[ghyatzo]

Second PR of the series:
This one is a bit on the nose, but maybe it can be helpful.

Given that the request bodies provided from the download page are valid JSON, instead of using py2ju we can simply use
JSON.parse with this change the usability would be almost exactly like the python API

dataset = "reanalysis-era5-single-levels"
request = """{
    "product_type": ["reanalysis"],
    "data_format": "grib",
    "download_format": "unarchived"
}""" # notice the """, this is a valid JSON String.

CDSAPI.retrieve(dataset, request, target)

So far I still haven't encountered a request in a format that wasn't already valid JSON.

In any case, it is still backwards compatible with using py2ju.

[juliohm]

Could you please comment on how this plays with the current CDSAPI.py2ju helper? Should the helper be deprecated?

[ghyatzo]

The current usage of the py2ju helper is untouched. Since the call would be
retrieve(dataset, CDSAPI.py2ju(request), target) instead of the proposed retrieve(dataset, JSON.parse(request), target).

Both calls will dispatch to retrieve(name, params::AbstractDict, filename) (and the resulting Dict should be the same)

Effectively yes, py2ju does the same job as JSON.parse.
I would maybe still keep it around to be backward compatible with scripts that use it. maybe with a deprecation warning?

[juliohm]

A deprecation warning is a good idea. We should update the README with the new recommended method, which is a simple copy/paste of the Python string. The README could also teach users that JSON.parse(pythonstring) produces a Julia dictionary for programmatic manipulation of the request body.

[juliohm]

I believe that we should always recommend the method with string for end-users, and leave this technical detail about dicts for developers as comments in the source code.

[ghyatzo]

Yes agree, I'll change accordingly.

[juliohm]

I've updated the retrieves docstring. Let's try to finish this PR first before #58. We can release a patch for this given that it is non breaking, and then consider a minor release for the scoped values feature.

[juliohm]

I've refactored the tests to simplify maintenance, and removed the testset related to py2ju, which now redirects to a new CDS.parse helper.

The tests are failing due to an undefined endpoint variable.

[ghyatzo]

That's weird, The endpoint line got clobbered somewhere. Maybe while moving from one pr to the other...

[juliohm]

The tests are now failing due to changes related to py2ju. Appreciate if you could adjust the request strings in the test sets to the new format, assuming it never contains single quotes.

[ghyatzo]

test pass locally with that last commit.

[juliohm]

Thank you! 🙂

[juliohm]

Released another patch JuliaRegistries/General#123128