Python (Django) how to assign a default value in case of error

Hey I’m using django in a project, using a POST method, the view in Django receives data, it works fine if the data is received but if no data is received I want to assign a default value instead of getting an error here is my code. I tried to use the if assignement but it doesn’t work.

@api_view(['POST'])
def getPacsPatients(request):
    data = json.loads(request.body.decode('utf-8'))
    if request.method == 'POST':
        PatientName = data["patientName"] if data["patientName"] else "*"
        #it works fine if data["patientName"] is present, but if not I get an error

Answer

You can read values from a dictionary with the get() function.

data.get(key, default_value)