Python requests authentication issue when adding records to Airtable database

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1

[beginner help needed]

I’m working on adding new entries to my Airtable database using Python requests library. The official documentation shows this curl example:

curl -X POST https://api.airtable.com/v0/your_base_id/table_name \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "fields": {
      "Product": "Laptop",
      "Count": "3",
      "User_ID": [
        "rec123456"
      ]
    }
  }'

Here’s my Python attempt:

import requests

BASE_URL = "https://api.airtable.com/v0/your_base_id/table_name"

payload = {
    "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "fields": {
        "Product": "smartphone",
        "Count": "2",
        "User_ID": ["rec789012"]
    }
}

response = requests.post(BASE_URL, payload)
print(response.json())

But I keep getting this authentication error:

{'error': {'type': 'AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED', 'message': 'Authentication required'}}

What’s the correct way to handle the authentication headers in Python requests?

2

yeah, keep headers separate from your data payload. and don’t forget to use your actual token instead of the ‘YOUR_TOKEN’ placeholder - made that mistake before lol. add some error handling too like response.raise_for_status() to catch issues easier.

3

You’re putting the Authorization header in the wrong place. It’s mixed up with your payload data.

Here’s the fix:

import requests

BASE_URL = "https://api.airtable.com/v0/your_base_id/table_name"

headers = {
    "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

payload = {
    "fields": {
        "Product": "smartphone",
        "Count": "2",
        "User_ID": ["rec789012"]
    }
}

response = requests.post(BASE_URL, headers=headers, json=payload)
print(response.json())

Two changes:

  1. Move Authorization and Content-Type into a separate headers dictionary
  2. Use json=payload instead of just payload

I’ve made this same mistake converting curl commands to Python. Those -H flags always go in headers, not the request body.