Originally from: http://sourceforge.net/p/pywikipediabot/bugs/1387/
Reported by: djbarrett
Created on: 2011-12-07 00:52:22
Subject: Error downloading data: No JSON object could be decoded
Original description:
replace.py produces the following error message in the middle of large search-and-replace operations.

Error downloading data: No JSON object could be decoded: line 1 column 0 \(char 0\)
Request en:/w/api.php?
Retrying in 1 minutes...

1 minute later, it fails again and retries in 2 minutes, then 4 minutes, etc.

The command was:

$ python replace.py -regex -nocase -start:\! '\\\\\\\\\(example\\.net|exampleus\)\\\common\\\softlib' '\\\example.net\global\softlib'

and when prompted for a replacement, I typed "a" for "All". After doing a bunch of replacements, the error started happening. This is with MediaWiki 1.17.1.

$ sudo python version.py
Pywikipedia \[http\] trunk/pywikipedia \(r9787, 2011/12/06, 07:41:04\)
Python 2.4.3 \(\#1, May 5 2011, 16:39:10\)
\[GCC 4.1.2 20080704 \(Red Hat 4.1.2-50\)\]
config-settings:
use\_api = True
use\_api\_login = True
unicode test: ok

Version: compat-(1.0)
Severity: normal
See Also:
https://sourceforge.net/p/pywikipediabot/bugs/1387