Attendance POST gives JSON error...HELP!

Julian Daniel

Having a really frustrating time trying to add an attendance entry to a test student. I'm using CURL, with the following request (edited only for security/privacy):

https://api.sky.blackbaud.com/school/v1/attendance

-X POST --header "Content-type: application/json" --header "Bb-Api-Subscription-Key: xxxxxxxxx" --header "Authorization: Bearer xxxxxxxxxxxx" --data-raw "{\\"begin_date\\":\\"2022-04-05T00:00:00-08:00\\",\\"end_date\\":\\"2022-04-05T00:00:00-08:00\\",\\"start_time\\":\\"00:00:00\\",\\"end_time\\":\\"23:59:00\\",\\"excuse_comment\\":\\"Testing\\",\\"excuse_type_id\\":3992,\\"student_user_id\\":444444}"

This generates the following unhelpful error message:

? * Line 1, Column 1
Syntax error: value, object or array expected.
* Line 1, Column 1
A valid JSON document must be either an array or an object value.

It doesn't matter how I massage the CURL Options - it keeps complaining that the JSON isn't properly formatted.

Any help figuring this out would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

Julian Daniel

And there's an error in the docs for the create attendance endpoint:

The sample data says:

{
"student_user_id": 10,
"begin_date": "2021-09-30T00:00:00Z",
"end_date": "2021-09-30T00:00:00Z",
"start_time": "2022-05-11",
"end_time": "2022-05-11",
"excuse_type_id": 153,
"excuse_comment": "College Trip"
}

however "2022-05-11" is not a time.

Julian Daniel

And I've tried --data and a single quote enclosing the data doesn't work for my CURL.

This exact same CURL format (--data-raw and escaped quotes) works perfectly with Raiser's Edge, and other endpoints in School…

Julian Daniel

ARGH! I'm getting the error because I'm trying to parse a NULL response from SKY!

The error wasn't coming from my POST data - it was because it was added without error and (unlike other endpoints) doesn't give any sort of “success!" reply to a POST.

It would be awfully nice if SKY gave some sort of confirmation!

Jared Harbour

Hi Julian,

It is true that the POST attendance route does not return a JSON response, but it does return a HttpResponse of 200 on success. Many POST routes don't need to return any data on success and the HttpResponse is usually enough.

I found this on Stackoverflow, hopefully it helps!

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29243587/curl-post-request-get-response-and-status-code

Best

Jared