Bitcoin RPC works in bitcoin-cli but not in python-bitcoinrpc: No JSON object

I'm running a testnet node. I can use bitcoin-cli just fine:

>bitcoin-cli.exe getinfo
{
    "version" : 100000,
    "protocolversion" : 70002,
    "walletversion" : 60000,
[... snipped]

But when I run this python code:

from bitcoinrpc.authproxy import AuthServiceProxy, JSONRPCException
import logging

rpc_user = "rpcuser"
rpc_password = "xxxxx"

logging.basicConfig()
logging.getLogger("BitcoinRPC").setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

rpc_connection = AuthServiceProxy("http://%s:%s@192.168.1.39:8332/" % (rpc_user, rpc_password))
print(rpc_connection.getinfo())

I get this error:

DEBUG:BitcoinRPC:-1-> getinfo []

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<path>\rawtransactiondemo\raw.py", line 11, in <module>
    print(rpc_connection.getinfo())
[... snipped]
  File "C:\Python27\lib\json\decoder.py", line 384, in raw_decode
    raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded

This is my bitcoin.conf:

testnet=1
rpcuser=bitcoinrpc
rpcpassword=xxxxx
daemon=1
rpcport=8332
rpcallowip=192.168.1.39
bind=192.168.1.39

I'm using the python-bitcoinrpc library.

Nick ODell

Posted 2015-03-12T21:37:35.253

Reputation: 26 536

Answers

I added some code to debug what bitcoin was sending back - it turned out to be a 401 error.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Error</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV='Content-Type' CONTENT='text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1'>
</HEAD>
<BODY><H1>401 Unauthorized.</H1></BODY>
</HTML>

Why was this triggered? If you look in my bitcoin.conf, and my python code, you can see that the username is different (bitcoinrpc vs. rpcuser). Changing that fixed it.

Anyways, if you get the error ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded, this might be your problem.

Nick ODell

Posted 2015-03-12T21:37:35.253

Reputation: 26 536

If you're using the testnet, rpcport should be 18332.

sleu

Posted 2015-03-12T21:37:35.253

Reputation: 1

3It's not required; you just need to use the same ports on both ends. In my bitcoin.conf, I set rpcport to 8332. – Nick ODell – 2015-03-13T14:15:05.933

@NickODell That would explain my testnet connectivity issues; I didn't realize the conf rpcport=8332 flag set port 8332 for mainnet AND testnet – Wizard Of Ozzie – 2015-03-15T10:42:03.773