Thanks for reading.

Background: I am trying to read a streaming API feed that returns data in JSON format, and then storing this data to a pymongo collection. The streaming API requires a "Accept-Encoding" : "Gzip" header.

What's happening: Code fails on json.loads and outputs - Extra data: line 2 column 1 - line 4 column 1 (char 1891 - 5597) (Refer Error Log below)

This does NOT happen while parsing every JSON object - it happens at random.

My guess is I am encountering some weird JSON object after every "x" proper JSON objects.

I did reference how to use pycurl if requested data is sometimes gzipped, sometimes not? and Encoding error while deserializing a json object from Google but so far have been unsuccessful at resolving this error.

Could someone please help me out here?

Error Log: Note: The raw dump of the JSON object below is basically using the repr() method.

'{"id":"tag:search.twitter.com,2005:207958320747782146","objectType":"activity","actor":{"objectType":"person","id":"id:twitter.com:493653150","link":"http://www.twitter.com/Deathnews_7_24","displayName":"Death News 7/24","postedTime":"2012-02-16T01:30:12.000Z","image":"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1834408513/deathnewstwittersquare_normal.jpg","summary":"Crashes, Murders, Suicides, Accidents, Crime and Naturals Death News From All Around World","links":[{"href":"http://www.facebook.com/DeathNews724","rel":"me"}],"friendsCount":56,"followersCount":14,"listedCount":1,"statusesCount":1029,"twitterTimeZone":null,"utcOffset":null,"preferredUsername":"Deathnews_7_24","languages":["tr"]},"verb":"post","postedTime":"2012-05-30T22:15:02.000Z","generator":{"displayName":"web","link":"http://twitter.com"},"provider":{"objectType":"service","displayName":"Twitter","link":"http://www.twitter.com"},"link":"http://twitter.com/Deathnews_7_24/statuses/207958320747782146","body":"Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Writers\xe2\x80\x99 Catalyst, Dies at 63 http://t.co/WBsNlNtA","object":{"objectType":"note","id":"object:search.twitter.com,2005:207958320747782146","summary":"Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Writers\xe2\x80\x99 Catalyst, Dies at 63 http://t.co/WBsNlNtA","link":"http://twitter.com/Deathnews_7_24/statuses/207958320747782146","postedTime":"2012-05-30T22:15:02.000Z"},"twitter_entities":{"urls":[{"display_url":"nytimes.com/2012/05/30/boo\xe2\x80\xa6","indices":[52,72],"expanded_url":"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/books/kathi-kamen-goldmark-writers-catalyst-dies-at-63.html","url":"http://t.co/WBsNlNtA"}],"hashtags":[],"user_mentions":[]},"gnip":{"language":{"value":"en"},"matching_rules":[{"value":"url_contains: nytimes.com","tag":null}],"klout_score":11,"urls":[{"url":"http://t.co/WBsNlNtA","expanded_url":"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/books/kathi-kamen-goldmark-writers-catalyst-dies-at-63.html?_r=1"}]}}\r\n{"id":"tag:search.twitter.com,2005:207958321003638785","objectType":"activity","actor":{"objectType":"person","id":"id:twitter.com:178760897","link":"http://www.twitter.com/Mobanu","displayName":"Donald Ochs","postedTime":"2010-08-15T16:33:56.000Z","image":"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1493224811/small_mobany_Logo_normal.jpg","summary":"","links":[{"href":"http://www.mobanuweightloss.com","rel":"me"}],"friendsCount":10272,"followersCount":9698,"listedCount":30,"statusesCount":725,"twitterTimeZone":"Mountain Time (US & Canada)","utcOffset":"-25200","preferredUsername":"Mobanu","languages":["en"],"location":{"objectType":"place","displayName":"Crested Butte, Colorado"}},"verb":"post","postedTime":"2012-05-30T22:15:02.000Z","generator":{"displayName":"twitterfeed","link":"http://twitterfeed.com"},"provider":{"objectType":"service","displayName":"Twitter","link":"http://www.twitter.com"},"link":"http://twitter.com/Mobanu/statuses/207958321003638785","body":"Mobanu: Can Exercise Be Bad for You?: Researchers have found evidence that some people who exercise do worse on ... http://t.co/mTsQlNQO","object":{"objectType":"note","id":"object:search.twitter.com,2005:207958321003638785","summary":"Mobanu: Can Exercise Be Bad for You?: Researchers have found evidence that some people who exercise do worse on ... http://t.co/mTsQlNQO","link":"http://twitter.com/Mobanu/statuses/207958321003638785","postedTime":"2012-05-30T22:15:02.000Z"},"twitter_entities":{"urls":[{"display_url":"nyti.ms/KUmmMa","indices":[116,136],"expanded_url":"http://nyti.ms/KUmmMa","url":"http://t.co/mTsQlNQO"}],"hashtags":[],"user_mentions":[]},"gnip":{"language":{"value":"en"},"matching_rules":[{"value":"url_contains: nytimes.com","tag":null}],"klout_score":12,"urls":[{"url":"http://t.co/mTsQlNQO","expanded_url":"http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/can-exercise-be-bad-for-you/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed"}]}}\r\n'
json exception: Extra data: line 2 column 1 - line 4 column 1 (char 1891 - 5597)

Header Output:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8

Vary: Accept-Encoding

Date: Wed, 30 May 2012 22:14:48 UTC

Connection: close

Transfer-Encoding: chunked

Content-Encoding: gzip

get_stream.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
import pycurl
import json
import pymongo

STREAM_URL = "https://stream.test.com:443/accounts/publishers/twitter/streams/track/Dev.json"
AUTH = "userid:passwd"

DB_HOST = "127.0.0.1"
DB_NAME = "stream_test"

class StreamReader:
    def __init__(self):
        try:
            self.count = 0
            self.buff = ""
            self.mongo = pymongo.Connection(DB_HOST)
            self.db = self.mongo[DB_NAME]
            self.raw_tweets = self.db["raw_tweets_gnip"]
            self.conn = pycurl.Curl()
            self.conn.setopt(pycurl.ENCODING, 'gzip')
            self.conn.setopt(pycurl.URL, STREAM_URL)
            self.conn.setopt(pycurl.USERPWD, AUTH)
            self.conn.setopt(pycurl.WRITEFUNCTION, self.on_receive)
            self.conn.setopt(pycurl.HEADERFUNCTION, self.header_rcvd)
            while True:
                self.conn.perform()
        except Exception as ex:
            print "error ocurred : %s" % str(ex)

    def header_rcvd(self, header_data):
        print header_data

    def on_receive(self, data):
        temp_data = data
        self.buff += data
        if data.endswith("\r\n") and self.buff.strip():
            try:
                tweet = json.loads(self.buff, encoding = 'UTF-8')
                self.buff = ""
                if tweet:
                    try:
                        self.raw_tweets.insert(tweet)
                    except Exception as insert_ex:
                        print "Error inserting tweet: %s" % str(insert_ex)
                    self.count += 1

                if self.count % 10 == 0:
                    print "inserted "+str(self.count)+" tweets"
            except Exception as json_ex:
                print "json exception: %s" % str(json_ex)
                print repr(temp_data)



stream = StreamReader()