--- title: Publishing an Article framework: applenews role: article role_heading: Article path: applenews/publishing-an-article --- # Publishing an Article Build a URL and article body for the publish-article request. ## Overview Overview To publish an article to your channel, you make a multipart POST request consisting of at least one MIME part named article.json. You provide additional parts for each resource that uses a URL in the format bundle:// URL. See Create an Article. On this page, you’ll learn how to: Build a publish-article URL. Build the article body. (Optional) Include a metadata.json file. Send the publish-article request. Copy This Code Open any text editor to copy this code. Save the file as create_article.py. import sys import requests import base64 import hmac import random import os import glob import hashlib from datetime import datetime class PublisherAPI: channel_id = "" current_action = "" key_id = "" key_secret = "" article_directory = "" url = "" def send_request(self, method, url, body=None, content_type=None): date = datetime.utcnow().strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ') if body: url = self.url + url canonical_request = method + url + date canonical_request = canonical_request.encode() if body: canonical_request += content_type + body signature = self.create_signature(canonical_request) authorization = "HHMAC; key=%s; signature=%s; date=%s" % ( self.key_id, signature, date) headers = {"Authorization": authorization} if body: headers["Content-Type"] = content_type return requests.request(method, url, headers=headers, data=body) def create_signature(self, canonical_request): key_bytes = base64.b64decode(self.key_secret) message = canonical_request secret = self.key_secret.encode("utf-8") signature = base64.b64encode( hmac.new(key_bytes, message, digestmod=hashlib.sh 256).digest()).decode("utf-8") return signature def create_article(self): method = "POST" path = "%s/articles" % self.channel_id body, content_type = self.build_article_body() return self.send_request(method, path, body, content_type) def build_article_body(self): boundary = str(random.getrandbits(64)) boundary = boundary.encode() content_type = b"multipart/form-data; boundary=%s" % boundary filenames = glob.glob('%s/*' % self.article_directory) parts = filter(None, map(lambda f: self.build_mime_part(boundary, f), filenames)) if not parts: sys.exit("%s doesn't appear to be a valid article bundle!" % self.article_directory) body = b"\r\n".join(parts) body += b"\r\n--%s--" % boundary return body, content_type def build_mime_part(self, boundary, filename): basename = os.path.basename(filename) content_type = self.guess_content_type(basename) if content_type == None: return None content_type = content_type.encode() part = bytearray() part = b"--%s\r\n" % boundary part += b"Content-Type: %s\r\n" % content_type if basename == 'metadata.json': part += b"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=metadata; size=%d\r\n\r\n" % os.stat(filename).st_size else: basename = basename.encode() part += b"Content-Disposition: form-data; filename=%s; size=%d\r\n\r\n" % (basename, os.stat(filename).st_size) with open(filename,'rb') as f: part += f.read() return part def guess_content_type(self, filename): extension = os.path.splitext(filename)[1] if filename == "article.json" or filename == "metadata.json": return "application/json" elif extension == ".jpg" or extension == ".jpeg": return "image/jpeg" elif extension == ".gif": return "image/gif" elif extension == ".png": return "image/png" return None def read_channel(self): method = "GET" url = self.url + "%s" % self.channel_id return self.send_request(method, url) def main(self): if self.current_action == "readChannel": response = self.read_channel() elif self.current_action == "createArticle": response = self.create_article() else: response = { "status_code": 400, "response": "{\"errors\":[{\"code\":\"UNKNOWN_COMMAND\"}]}" } return response if __name__ == '__main__': if not len(sys.argv) > 1: print ('no arguments') exit() publisherAPI = PublisherAPI() publisherAPI.url = sys.argv[1] + "/channels/" publisherAPI.channel_id = sys.argv[2] publisherAPI.key_id = sys.argv[3] publisherAPI.key_secret = sys.argv[4] if len(sys.argv) == 6: publisherAPI.article_directory = sys.argv[5] publisherAPI.current_action = "createArticle" else: publisherAPI.current_action = "readChannel" response = publisherAPI.main() print(response.status_code) print(response.text) Create the Metadata File This step is optional. You might want to include a metadata file to provide additional data about the article. To create the metadata file, open any text editor and include optional metadata fields. Save the file as metadata.json. For information about supported metadata fields, see Create Article Metadata Fields. This is an example metadata.json file. { "data": { "isPreview": true, "isHidden": true "maturityRating": null, "links": { "sections": [ "https://news-api.apple.com/sections/0a468272-356f-3b61-afa3-c4f989954180", "https://news-api.apple.com/sections/5cec0b36-529e-31bc-bc1e-3eaccbc15b97" ] } } Run the Script Start the command prompt and change to the directory containing create_article.py. Run this script to make a Create an Article request to the Apple News API. This script takes five arguments: API URL (https://news-api.apple.com), Channel ID, Key ID, Secret, and the path to the article directory. python create_article.py https://news-api.apple.com channel_id key_id key_secret path/to/article/directory/ Result The server returns the ArticleResponse object. For more information, see Article, ArticleLinks, and Meta. How It Works To publish an article, you build the publish-article URL using the POST method. method = "POST" path = "%s/articles" % self.channel_id Next, you build the request body and set the content type. The body contains one or more parts based on the number of files in your article and the content type, as shown here: body, content_type = self.build_article_body() Next, you create a boundary to separate the request parts, as shown here. This is a unique string. boundary = str(random.getrandbits(64)) Next, you declare the content type along with the boundary, as shown here: content_type = b"multipart/form-data; boundary=%s" % boundary The content type looks like this: multipart/form-data; boundary=14970318244633716999 Next, you build the MIME parts for each file in the article you want to publish. filenames = glob.glob('%s/*' % self.article_directory) parts = filter(None, map(lambda f: self.build_mime_part(boundary, f), filenames)) When you build the MIME parts, only use the Apple News-supported file-format extensions; for example, JSON, JPEG, GIF, and PNG. See Preparing Image, Video, Audio, Music, and ARKit Assets. extension = os.path.splitext(filename)[1] if filename == "article.json" or filename == "metadata.json": return "application/json" elif extension == ".jpg" or extension == ".jpeg": return "image/jpeg" elif extension == ".gif": return "image/gif" elif extension == ".png": return "image/png" return None Once you determine the file type, you construct each part from Content-Type, Content-Disposition, and the file data, as shown here. If you include the metadata.json file, the Content-Disposition header adds name=metadata to ensure that the system recognizes the metadata for the article. part = b"--%s\r\n" % boundary part += b"Content-Type: %s\r\n" % content_type if basename == 'metadata.json': part += b"Content-Disposition: form-data; name=metadata; size=%d\r\n\r\n" % os.stat( filename).st_size else: basename = basename.encode() part += b"Content-Disposition: form-data; filename=%s; size=%d\r\n\r\n" % ( basename, os.stat(filename).st_size) with open(filename, 'rb') as f: part += f.read() A part looks like this: --6030599197195158890 Content-Type: image/jpeg Content-Disposition: form-data; filename=photo.jpg; size=20483 {binary data} Next, you join the parts together and denote the end of the multipart form data by the boundary, preceded by two dashes (--). body = b"\r\n".join(parts) body += b"\r\n--%s--" % boundary Finally, you combine the canonical request with the request body and make the request. def send_request(self, method, url, body=None, content_type=None): date = datetime.utcnow().strftime('%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ') if body: url = self.url + url canonical_request = method + url + date canonical_request = canonical_request.encode() if body: canonical_request += content_type + body signature = self.create_signature(canonical_request) authorization = "HHMAC; key=%s; signature=%s; date=%s" % (self.key_id, signature, date) headers = {"Authorization": authorization} if body: headers["Content-Type"] = content_type return requests.request(method, url, headers=headers, data=body) ## See Also ### Apple News API Python Tutorial - [Making an HTTP Request to the Apple News API](applenews/making-an-http-request-to-the-apple-news-api.md) - [Signing the HTTP Request](applenews/signing-the-http-request.md)