[json] How to PUT a json object with an array using curl

I have a series of data to enter into database. The user interface to enter the data isn't good for bulk entry, so I'm trying to formulate a command line equivalent. When I examine the network request of the UI in chrome, I see a PUT request of a json object. When I try to replicate the request

curl -H 'Accept: application/json' -X PUT '{"tags":["tag1","tag2"],"question":"Which band?","answers":[{"id":"a0","answer":"Answer1"},{"id":"a1","answer":"answer2"}]}' http://example.com/service`

I get a error

curl: (3) [globbing] nested braces not supported at pos X

Where X is the character position of first "[".

How can I PUT a json object that includes an array?

This question is related to json curl

The answer is


Your command line should have a -d/--data inserted before the string you want to send in the PUT, and you want to set the Content-Type and not Accept.

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -X PUT -d '[JSON]' \
     http://example.com/service

Using the exact JSON data from the question, the full command line would become:

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -X PUT \
    -d '{"tags":["tag1","tag2"],
         "question":"Which band?",
         "answers":[{"id":"a0","answer":"Answer1"},
                    {"id":"a1","answer":"answer2"}]}' \
    http://example.com/service

Note: JSON data wrapped only for readability, not valid for curl request.


It should be mentioned that the Accept header tells the server something about what we are accepting back, whereas the relevant header in this context is Content-Type

It's often advisable to specify Content-Type as application/json when sending JSON. For curl the syntax is:

-H 'Content-Type: application/json'

So the complete curl command will be:

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'Accept: application/json' -X PUT -d '{"tags":["tag1","tag2"],"question":"Which band?","answers":[{"id":"a0","answer":"Answer1"},{"id":"a1","answer":"answer2"}]}' http://example.com/service`

The only thing that helped is to use a file of JSON instead of json body text. Based on How to send file contents as body entity using cURL


Although the original post had other issues (i.e. the missing "-d"), the error message is more generic.

curl: (3) [globbing] nested braces not supported at pos X

This is because curly braces {} and square brackets [] are special globbing characters in curl. To turn this globbing off, use the "-g" option.

As an example, the following Solr facet query will fail without the "-g" to turn off curl globbing: curl -g 'http://localhost:8983/solr/query?json.facet={x:{terms:"myfield"}}'


Try using a single quote instead of double quotes along with -g

Following scenario worked for me

curl -g -d '{"collection":[{"NumberOfParcels":1,"Weight":1,"Length":1,"Width":1,"Height":1}]}" -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" --user [email protected]:123456 -X POST  https://yoururl.com

WITH

curl -g -d "{'collection':[{'NumberOfParcels':1,'Weight':1,'Length':1,'Width':1,'Height':1}]}" -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" --user [email protected]:123456 -X POST  https://yoururl.com

This especially resolved my error curl command error : bad url colon is first character