A Python script for the REST API tutorial, "Backing up your knowledge base," at https://help.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/229136947

make_backup.py

import os
import datetime
import csv

import requests

credentials = 'your_zendesk_email', 'your_zendesk_password'
zendesk = 'https://your_subdomain.zendesk.com'
language = 'some_locale'

date = datetime.date.today()
backup_path = os.path.join(str(date), language)
if not os.path.exists(backup_path):
    os.makedirs(backup_path)

log = []

endpoint = zendesk + '/api/v2/help_center/{locale}/articles.json'.format(locale=language.lower())
while endpoint:
    response = requests.get(endpoint, auth=credentials)
    if response.status_code != 200:
        print('Failed to retrieve articles with error {}'.format(response.status_code))
        exit()
    data = response.json()

    for article in data['articles']:
        if article['body'] is None:
            continue
        title = '<h1>' + article['title'] + '</h1>'
        filename = '{id}.html'.format(id=article['id'])
        with open(os.path.join(backup_path, filename), mode='w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
            f.write(title + '\n' + article['body'])
        print('{id} copied!'.format(id=article['id']))

        log.append((filename, article['title'], article['author_id']))

    endpoint = data['next_page']

with open(os.path.join(backup_path, '_log.csv'), mode='wt', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    writer.writerow( ('File', 'Title', 'Author ID') )
    for article in log:
        writer.writerow(article)

Partially works for me. Everything is smooth until I hit this error:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "make_backup.py", line 34, in <module> f.write(title + '\n' + article['body']) TypeError: Can't convert 'NoneType' object to str implicitly

My assumption is that I have a saved draft with no article body and this is causing the NoneType error. Any thoughts?

I had to check if article['body'] was None, and if it was, I just logged the article id, skipping the write file part.

Thanks @biancarosa and @jham1. I added a check for an empty article body in the for article in data['articles'] loop. The script broke when it tried to concatenate a string type with a 'NoneType' in (title + '\n' + article['body']).