Issue accessing RapidAPI with httr / R - Status: 401

Question

I am trying to access a RapidAPI with the httr package in R as follows:

library(httr)
url <- "https://extract-news.p.rapidapi.com/v0/article"
queryString <- list(url = "https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/17/21224728/bill-gates-coronavirus-lies-5g-covid-19")
response <- VERB("GET", url, addheaders(x_rapidapi_key ="my-api-key", x_rapidapi_host = "extract-news.p.rapidapi.com"), query = queryString, contenttype("application/octet-stream"))
content(response, "text")

I tried accessing other APIs too. However, I keep getting this error message:

Status: 401 

Could you please help me solve this issue? Thanks a lot in advance!

Answer 1

Try using content_type() and add_headers instead of contenttype and addheaders to tell the server what sort of data you are sending. Read more about the VERB method here.

library(httr)

url <- "https://extract-news.p.rapidapi.com/v0/article"

queryString <- list(url = "https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/17/21224728/bill-gates-coronavirus-lies-5g-covid-19")

response <- VERB("GET", url, add_headers(x_rapidapi-host = 'extract-news.p.rapidapi.com', x_rapidapi-key = '*************************', '), query = queryString, content_type("application/octet-stream"))

content(response, "text")