26. How to Read APIs, JSON and Zipped CSVs into pandas

26.6 Common Mistakes

By Ravindra Bagale, trainer · LinkedIn · Last updated: 24 October 2026

Why. Two classroom disasters: (1) API key in Git; (2) downloading a 2 GB extract into RAM on a 8 GB laptop without filters.

What.

• No timeout → hung kernel.
• Ignoring status_code → parsing HTML as JSON.
• DataFrame(payload) on a wrapped dict → wrong grain.
• Reading zip path wrong (orders.csv inside but you pointed at folder).
• Logging full response text that contains tokens.

How.

Worked example A — Status check.

import requests

r = requests.get("https://httpbin.org/status/404", timeout=30)
print(r.status_code)
try:
    r.raise_for_status()
except requests.HTTPError as e:
    print("caught", type(e).__name__)

Worked example B — Wrong grain reminder.

import pandas as pd
payload = {"count": 2, "orders": [{"order_id": "BLK-1"}, {"order_id": "BLK-2"}]}
print(pd.DataFrame(payload))
print(pd.DataFrame(payload["orders"]))

Worked example C — Zip member pick.

Shraddha’s zip held orders.csv and README.txt. She listed names, then pd.read_csv(z.open("orders.csv")) pattern — or extracted one file first.