Simulating ajax request using python using lib requests

Question

Why requestdoesn’t download the answer for this web page?

#!/usr/bin/python

import requests

headers={ 'content-type':'application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8',
     'Accept-Encoding': 'gzip, deflate',
     'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0',
     'Referer' : 'http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/football',
    }

payload={'N': '4294966750',
     'facetCount_156%23327': '12',
     'facetCount_157%23325': '8',
     'form-trigger':'moreId',
     'moreId':'156%23327',
     'pageId':'p_football_home_page',
     'pageType':'EventClass',
     'type':'ajaxrequest'
     }

url='http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/view/EventDetailPageComponentController'

r = requests.post(url, data=payload, headers=headers)

These are the parameters POSTthat I see in Firebug, and there the received answer contains a list (of football leagues), but when I run my python script like this, I get nothing.

(You can see the request in Firefox by clicking the linkSee All in the competition section of the left navigation bar and looking at XHR in Firebug. Firebug's answer shows the HTML body as expected.)

Any ideas? Will my handling of characters %in the payload cause any problems at all?

EDIT: attempt to use session

from requests import Request, Session

#turn post string into dict: 
def parsePOSTstring(POSTstr):
    paramList = POSTstr.split('&')
    paramDict = dict([param.split('=') for param in paramList])
    return paramDict

headers={'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0',
     'Referer' : 'http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/football'
    }

#prep the data (POSTstr copied from Firebug raw source)
POSTstr = "moreId=156%23327&facetCount_156%23327=12&event=&N=4294966750&pageType=EventClass&
          pageId=p_football_home_page&type=ajaxrequest&eventIDNav=&removedSelectionNav=&
          currentSelectedId=&form-trigger=moreId"
payload = parsePOSTstring(POSTstr)

#end url
url='http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/view/EventDetailPageComponentController'

#start a session to manage cookies, and visit football page first so referer agrees
s = Session()
s.get('http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/football')
#now visit disired url with headers/data
r = s.post(url, data=payload, headers=headers)

#print output
print r.text #this is empty

Working curl

curl 'http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/view/EventDetailPageComponentController'
-H 'Cookie: JSESSIONID=DE93158F07E02DD3CC1CC32B1AA24A9E.ecomprodsw015;
    geoCode=FRA; 
    FLAGS=en|en|uk|default|ODDS|0|GBP;
    ECOM_BETA_SPORTS=1;
    PLAYED=4%7C0%7C0%7C0%7C0%7C0%7C0'
-H 'Referer: http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/football'
-H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:27.0) 
    Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0'  
--data 'facetCount_157%23325=8&moreId=156%23327&
        facetCount_156%23327=12&event=&
        N=4294966750&
        pageType=EventClass&pageId=p_football_home_page&
        type=ajaxrequest&eventIDNav=&
        removedSelectionNav=&currentSelectedId=&
        form-trigger=moreId' --compressed

But this curl works.

Answer 1

, :

from requests import Session

session = Session()

# HEAD requests ask for *just* the headers, which is all you need to grab the
# session cookie
session.head('http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/football')

response = session.post(
    url='http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/view/EventDetailPageComponentController',
    data={
        'N': '4294966750',
        'form-trigger': 'moreId',
        'moreId': '156#327',
        'pageType': 'EventClass'
    },
    headers={
        'Referer': 'http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/football'
    }
)

print response.text

POST , # %23 POST (, 156%23327 156#327).