Published February 21, 2022

An ESP32 walks into a bar - Jokes web API using MicroPython

In this tutorial, we use the network and urequests libraries in MicroPython to connect an ESP32 to the web and fetch programming jokes!

BeginnerProtip30 minutes154

An ESP32 walks into a bar - Jokes web API using MicroPython

Things used in this project

Software apps and online services

Wokwi

Story

Originallypublishedhere

(If this is your first time here, check out my first MicroPython tutorial. Use it to get acquainted with the Wokwi simulator interface so that you are prepared to dive into this tutorial)

This week, our MicroPython tutorial flies away and connects to the web to fetch data from an API! While filming it, I ran into a temporary issue with the Wokwi simulator (thankfully it's fixed now 🙂, they were quick) so I ported the code to an actual ESP32 to continue the tutorial. Crisis averted, whew!

What we can learn from this experience is that Wokwi is actually a perfect prototyping tool because I had to make zerochanges to the code for it to work on real hardware. Amazing!

Hope you enjoy, and click follow/subscribe on my YouTube channel to get notified when new tutorials are out! I release them about once a week. As always, if you have questions or just wanna chat, hit me up on Twitter!

Final solution

import network
import time
import urequests

print("Connecting to WiFi", end="")
sta_if = network.WLAN(network.STA_IF)
sta_if.active(True)
sta_if.connect('Wokwi-GUEST', '')
while not sta_if.isconnected():
  print(".", end="")
  time.sleep(0.1)
print(" Connected!")

resp = urequests.get("https://v2.jokeapi.dev/joke/Programming")
joke_dict = resp.json()
print("Here's a joke!")
if 'joke' in joke_dict:
  print(joke_dict['joke'])
else:
  print(joke_dict['setup'])
  print(joke_dict['delivery'])

print()