How to handle JSON responses with Python requests json? or Best practices for parsing JSON data using

Hey! Had the same issue last week. Turns out some APIs send JSON with a BOM (byte order mark) at the start, which messes up decoding.

Try `response.content.decode('utf-8-sig')` before parsing. Works like a charm for me.

Also, Postman is great for checking raw responses—sometimes the API is just sending malformed JSON.