Elegantly handle github API requests exceptions

I have this code which creates a team using the github API and returns the team-id(success) or -1(failure).

My problem is with the error handling. When the request responses with an error status code I try to deal with a few different types of failure. It looks like a mess!

Is there any way to make it more readable/elegant?

I'd also like to know if I am catching all the reasonable exceptions that can be thrown by requests.

def create_team(org,team_name):
    '''
    Try to create a team and return its id
    if already exisits return id
    '''
    try:
        data = {
            "name": team_name,
            "permission": "push"
        }
        headers = {'Authorization': 'token '+OAUTH_TOKEN}

        response = requests.post(GH_API_URL+'orgs/'+org['login']+'/teams',
                                    headers=headers,
                                    data = json.dumps(data))

        response.raise_for_status() #throw exception if request does not retun 2xx

        #http status is 2xx, team must have been created
        json_response = json.loads(response.text)
        return json_response['id'] #get id of new team from response

    except requests.exceptions.HTTPError as e:

        if response.status_code == 422: #Unprocessable Entity 
            json_response = json.loads(response.text)
            if json_response['errors'][0]['code'] == 'already_exists': #Unprocessable because already exists
                print(' not created, team already exists!!!')

                #get the id of existing team
                team_id = get_teamID_from_name(org, team_name)

                return team_id
            else:  #Unprocessable for some other reason
                print(' HTTP error: '+str(e))

        else: #other HTTP error != 422
            print(' HTTP error: '+str(e))

    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
        print('Connection error: '+str(e))

    return -1

In case you were wondering why I don't just check

One way to slightly speed-up is by reducing the overhead of the requests module. Currently your code has to establish a connection once for every team, re-transmitting the authentication API code and so on. This is a solved problem, you could use sessions.

You would have to start it with a context-manager in you outer function (where you loop over all of the team-names to create) and pass the session object to the create_team function.

I also shuffled some code out of the try block, you should have only the least possible amount in there, so you can be sure what exactly raised an error. I also inserted early returns, but there are other schools of thought which prefer a single exit for functions at the cost of having more code in the try block.

I also tried including a bare bones implementation for your outer function, but yours might be slightly different, of course.

I used str.format, where applicable instead of string addition.

import requests

OAUTH_TOKEN = "XXX"
HEADERS = {'Authorization': 'token {}'.format(OAUTH_TOKEN)}
GH_API_URL = "http://github.com/XXX"

def create_teams(org, team_names):
    with requests.Session() as session:
        session.headers.update(HEADERS)
        for team_name in team_names:
            create_team(session, org['login'], team_name)

def create_team(session, org_name, team_name):
    '''
    Try to create a team and return its id.
    If it already exists return id
    '''
    data = {
        "name": team_name,
        "permission": "push"
    }
    url = '{}orgs/{}/teams'.format(GH_API_URL, org_name)
    try:
        response = session.post(url, data=json.dumps(data))
        response.raise_for_status()  # throw exception if request does not return 2xx
    except requests.exceptions.HTTPError as e:
        if response.status_code == 422:  # Unprocessable Entity
            json_response = json.loads(response.text)
            # Unprocessable because already exists
            if json_response['errors'][0]['code'] == 'already_exists':
                print('{} not created, team already exists!!!'.format(team_name))
                # get the id of existing team
                return get_teamID_from_name(session, org, team_name)
        # Unprocessable for some other reason or other HTTP error != 422
        print(' HTTP error: {}'.format(e))
        return -1

    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
        print('Connection error: {}'.format(e))
        return -1

    # http status is 2xx, team must have been created
    json_response = json.loads(response.text)
    return json_response['id']  # get id of new team from response

StackExchange Code Review Q#156525, answer score: 4