How do I POST JSON data with cURL?

Question

I use Ubuntu and installed cURL on it. I want to test my Spring REST application with cURL. I wrote my POST code at the Java side. However, I want to test it with cURL. I am

Answer 1

This worked for me for on Windows10

curl -d "{"""owner""":"""sasdasdasdasd"""}" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X  PUT http://localhost:8080/api/changeowner/CAR4

Answer 2

For Windows, having a single quote for the -d value did not work for me, but it did work after changing to double quote. Also I needed to escape double quotes inside curly brackets.

That is, the following did not work:

curl -i -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"key":"val"}' http://localhost:8080/appname/path

But the following worked:

curl -i -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"key\":\"val\"}" http://localhost:8080/appname/path

Answer 3

I am using the below format to test with a web server.

use -F 'json data'

Let's assume this JSON dict format:

{
    'comment': {
        'who':'some_one',
        'desc' : 'get it'
    }
}

Full example

curl -XPOST your_address/api -F comment='{"who":"some_one", "desc":"get it"}'

Answer 4

You need to set your content-type to application/json. But -d sends the Content-Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded, which is not accepted on Spring's side.

Looking at the curl man page, I think you can use -H:

-H "Content-Type: application/json"

Full example:

curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --request POST \
  --data '{"username":"xyz","password":"xyz"}' \
  http://localhost:3000/api/login

(-H is short for --header, -d for --data)

Note that -request POST is optional if you use -d, as the -d flag implies a POST request.

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On Windows, things are slightly different. See the comment thread.

Answer 5

Try to put your data in a file, say body.json and then use

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data @body.json http://localhost:8080/ui/webapp/conf

Answer 6

This worked for me:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d @./my_json_body.txt http://192.168.1.1/json