Tried building a weather app and my API key kept failing on me

I spent 3 hours last night trying to pull data from OpenWeatherMap and kept getting a 401 error. Turns out I was copying the wrong key from my account dashboard. Has anyone else had a dumb setup mistake like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

janaw1117d ago

I read somewhere that API key mistakes are like the number one newbie error with weather APIs. That 401 code is just brutal because you think your code is broken but it's really just a typo or wrong key. I remember getting that same error when I was messing with a different API for a project and I almost threw my laptop out the window. Have you tried putting your key in an environment variable instead of copying it every time? It saves a lot of headache once you get it set up right.

zarapalmer17d ago

Oh man, I heard that mistake is super common too. I think I read somewhere that something like 70% of first-time API errors are just key problems. Once I started using environment variables for my keys it made things so much less frustrating honestly.