curl vs python "requests" when hitting APIs

Here's a way to do basic HTTP auth with Python's requests module:

requests.post('https://api.bitbucket.org/1.0/user/repositories', auth=('user', 'pass'))

With the other way you're passing the user/pass through the request's payload, which is not desired since HTTP basic auth has its own place in the HTTP protocol.

If you want to "see" what's happening under the hood with your request I recommend using httpbin:

>>> url = "http://httpbin.org/post"
>>> r = requests.post(url, data="myscreename:mypassword")
>>> print r.text
{
  "args": {}, 
  "data": "myscreename:mypassword", 
  "files": {}, 
  "form": {}, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*", 
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate", 
    "Content-Length": "22", 
    "Host": "httpbin.org", 
    "User-Agent": "python-requests/2.5.1 CPython/2.7.6 Darwin/14.3.0"
  }, 
  "json": null, 
  "origin": "16.7.5.3", 
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/post"
}

>>> r = requests.post(url, auth=("myscreename", "mypassword"))
>>> print r.text
{
  "args": {}, 
  "data": "", 
  "files": {}, 
  "form": {}, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*", 
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate", 
    "Authorization": "Basic bXlzY3JlZW5hbWU6bXlwYXNzd29yZA==", 
    "Content-Length": "0", 
    "Host": "httpbin.org", 
    "User-Agent": "python-requests/2.5.1 CPython/2.7.6 Darwin/14.3.0"
  }, 
  "json": null, 
  "origin": "16.7.5.3", 
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/post"
}

And with curl:

curl -X POST --user myscreename:mypassword http://httpbin.org/post
{
  "args": {}, 
  "data": "", 
  "files": {}, 
  "form": {}, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*", 
    "Authorization": "Basic bXlzY3JlZW5hbWU6bXlwYXNzd29yZA==", 
    "Host": "httpbin.org", 
    "User-Agent": "curl/7.37.1"
  }, 
  "json": null, 
  "origin": "16.7.5.3", 
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/post"
}

Notice the resemblance between the last python example and the cURL one.

Now, getting right the API's format is another story, check out this link: https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/94245/can-i-create-a-bitbucket-repository-using-rest-api

The python way should be something like this:

requests.post('https://api.bitbucket.org/1.0/repositories', auth=('user', 'pass'), data = "name=repo_name")