Fixing the "bytes-like object is required, not 'dict'" Error in Python Requests

When working with the Python Requests library to make HTTP requests, you may encounter the error "a bytes-like object is required, not 'dict'". This occurs when Requests is expecting a bytes-like object for the request body, but you have passed in a Python dictionary instead.

For example:

import requests

data = {'key1': 'value1', 'key2': 'value2'}
response = requests.post('https://example.com/api', data=data)

This would result in the bytes-like object error because Requests is expecting a bytes-like object like a string, byte array, etc. for the data parameter.

Here are a few ways to fix this:

import json

data = json.dumps(data) 
response = requests.post('https://example.com/api', data=data)

response = requests.post('https://example.com/api', json=data)

data = bytes(data)
response = requests.post('https://example.com/api', data=data)

The key thing to understand is that Requests needs to send the data in a raw byte format over HTTP. Using the json parameter is recommended as it will handle encoding to bytes for you automatically.

Hope this helps explain what that "bytes-like object is required, not 'dict'" error means and how to fix it when working with Python Requests!