HTTPResponse' object has no attribute 'decode - json

Question

I was getting the following error initially when I was trying to run the code below-
Error:-the JSON object must be str, not 'bytes'
import urllib.request
import json
search = '230 boulder lane cottonwood az'
search = search.replace(' ','%20')
places_api_key = 'AIzaSyDou2Q9Doq2q2RWJWncglCIt0kwZ0jcR5c'
url = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/textsearch/json?query='+search+'&key='+places_api_key
json_obj = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
data = json.load(json_obj)
for item in data ['results']:
print(item['formatted_address'])
print(item['types'])
After making some troubleshooting changes like:-
json_obj = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
obj = json.load(json_obj)
data = json_obj .readall().decode('utf-8')
Error - 'HTTPResponse' object has no attribute 'decode'
I am getting the error above, I have tried multiple posts on stackoverflow nothing seem to work. I have uploaded the entire working code if anyone can get it to work I'll be very grateful. What I don't understand is that why the same thing worked for others and not me.
Thanks!

Answer 1

urllib.request.urlopen returns an HTTPResponse object which cannot be directly json decoded (because it is a bytestream)
So you'll instead want:
# Convert from bytes to text
resp_text = urllib.request.urlopen(url).read().decode('UTF-8')
# Use loads to decode from text
json_obj = json.loads(resp_text)
However, if you print resp_text from your example, you'll notice it is actually xml, so you'll want an xml reader:
resp_text = urllib.request.urlopen(url).read().decode('UTF-8')
(Pdb) print(resp_text)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<PlaceSearchResponse>
<status>OK</status>
...
update (python3.6+)
In python3.6+, json.load can take a byte stream (and json.loads can take a byte string)
This is now valid:
json_obj = json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(url))