How to catch exception output from Python subprocess.check_output()?

Question

I\'m trying to do a Bitcoin payment from within Python. In bash I would normally do this:

bitcoin sendtoaddress  


        

Answer 1

According to the subprocess.check_output() docs, the exception raised on error has an output attribute that you can use to access the error details:

try:
    subprocess.check_output(...)
except subprocess.CalledProcessError as e:
    print(e.output)

You should then be able to analyse this string and parse the error details with the json module:

if e.output.startswith('error: {'):
    error = json.loads(e.output[7:]) # Skip "error: "
    print(error['code'])
    print(error['message'])