Using curl to upload POST data with files

Question

I would like to use cURL to not only send data parameters in HTTP POST but to also upload files with specific form name  How should I go about doing that    HTTP Post parameters   userid   12345 filecomment   This is an image file  HTTP File upload  File location    home user1 Desktop test jpg Form name for file   image  correspond to the   FILES  image   at the PHP side   I figured part of the cURL command as follows   curl -d  userid 1 amp filecomment This is an image file  --data-binary    home user1 Desktop test jpg  localhost uploader php   The problem I am getting is as follows   Notice  Undefined index  image in  var www uploader php   The problem is I am using   FILES  image   to pick up files in the PHP script   How do I adjust my cURL commands accordingly

User · Answer

The issue that lead me here turned out to be a basic user error - I wasn't including the @ sign in the path of the file and so curl was posting the path/name of the file rather than the contents. The Content-Length value was therefore 8 rather than the 479 I expected to see given the legnth of my test file.

The Content-Length header will be automatically calculated when curl reads and posts the file.

curl -i -H "Content-Type: application/xml" --data "@test.xml" -v -X POST https://<url>/<uri/

... < Content-Length: 479 ...

Posting this here to assist other newbies in future.

User · Answer

As an alternative to curl  you can use HTTPie  it a CLI  cURL-like tool for humans    Installation instructions  https   github com jakubroztocil httpie installation Then  run   http -f POST http   localhost 4040 api users username johnsnow photo images avatar jpg  HTTP 1 1 200 OK Access-Control-Expose-Headers  X-Frontend Cache-control  no-store Connection  keep-alive Content-Encoding  gzip Content-Length  89 Content-Type  text html  charset windows-1251 Date  Tue  26 Jun 2018 11 11 55 GMT Pragma  no-cache Server  Apache Vary  Accept-Encoding X-Frontend  front623311

User · Answer

I got it worked with this command curl -F  filename   home yourhomedirextory file txt  http   yourserver upload

User · Answer

Here is my solution  I have been reading a lot of posts and they were really helpful  Finally I wrote some code for small files  with cURL and PHP that I think its really useful   public function postFile                  file url    test txt      here is the file route  in this case is on same directory but you can set URL too like  http   examplewebsite com test txt           eol     r n     default line-break for mime type          BOUNDARY   md5 time       random boundaryid  is a separator for each param on my post curl function          BODY       init my curl body          BODY    --   BOUNDARY   eol    start param header          BODY     Content-Disposition  form-data  name  sometext      eol    eol     last Content with 2  eol  in this case is only 1 content           BODY     Some Data     eol   param data in this case is a simple post data and 1  eol for the end of the data          BODY    --   BOUNDARY   eol     start 2nd param           BODY    Content-Disposition  form-data  name  somefile   filename  test txt     eol     first Content data for post file  remember you only put 1 when you are going to add more Contents  and 2 on the last  to close the Content Instance          BODY    Content-Type  application octet-stream     eol    Same before row          BODY    Content-Transfer-Encoding  base64     eol    eol     we put the last Content and 2  eol           BODY   chunk split base64 encode file get contents  file url       eol     we write the Base64 File Content and the  eol to finish the data           BODY    --   BOUNDARY   --     eol   eol     we close the param and the post width  --  and 2  eol at the end of our boundary header              ch   curl init      init curl         curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT HTTPHEADER  array                            X PARAM TOKEN   71e2cb8b-42b7-4bf0-b2e8-53fbd2f578f9    custom header for my api validation you can get it from   SERVER  HTTP X PARAM TOKEN   variable                            Content-Type  multipart form-data  boundary    BOUNDARY    setting our mime type for make it work on   FILE variable                                curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT USERAGENT   Mozilla 1 0  Windows NT 6 1  WOW64  rv 28 0  Gecko 20100101 Firefox 28 0      setting our user agent         curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT URL   api endpoint post      setting our api post url         curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT COOKIEJAR   BOUNDARY   txt      saving cookies just in case we want         curl setopt   ch  CURLOPT RETURNTRANSFER  1      call return content         curl setopt   ch  CURLOPT FOLLOWLOCATION  1   navigate the endpoint         curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT POST  true     set as post         curl setopt  ch  CURLOPT POSTFIELDS   BODY      set our  BODY             response   curl exec  ch      start curl navigation       print r  response     print response      With this we should be get on the  api endpoint post  the following vars posted  You can easily test with this script  and you should be receive this debugs on the function postFile   at the last row   print r  response     print response  public function getPostFile          echo   n n SERVER n       echo   lt pre gt        print r   SERVER  HTTP X PARAM TOKEN         echo    lt pre gt        echo   POST n       echo   lt pre gt        print r   POST  sometext         echo    lt pre gt        echo   FILES n       echo   lt pre gt        print r   FILEST  somefile         echo    lt pre gt        It should work well  they may be better solutions but this works and is really helpful to understand how the Boundary and multipart from-data mime works on PHP and cURL library

User · Answer

Catching the user id as path variable  recommended    curl -i -X POST -H  Content-Type  multipart form-data   -F  data  test mp3  http   mysuperserver media 1234 upload    Catching the user id as part of the form   curl -i -X POST -H  Content-Type  multipart form-data   -F  data  test mp3 userid 1234  http   mysuperserver media upload    or   curl -i -X POST -H  Content-Type  multipart form-data   -F  data  test mp3  -F  userid 1234  http   mysuperserver media upload

User · Answer

You need to use the -F option  -F --form  lt name content gt  Specify HTTP multipart POST data  H   Try this   curl     -F  userid 1      -F  filecomment This is an image file      -F  image   home user1 Desktop test jpg      localhost uploader php

User · Answer

Here is how to correctly escape arbitrary filenames of uploaded files with bash      bin bash set -eu  f   1  f   f           f   f           f   f          curl --silent --form  uploaded     f      2

User · Answer

if you are uploading binary file such as csv  use below format to upload file  curl -X POST        http   localhost 8080 workers        -H  authorization  eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6ImFjY2VzcyIsInR5cGUiOiJhY2Nlc3MifQ eyJ1c2VySWQiOjEsImFjY291bnRJZCI6MSwiaWF0IjoxNTExMzMwMzg5LCJleHAiOjE1MTM5MjIzODksImF1ZCI6Imh0dHBzOi8veW91cmRvbWFpbi5jb20iLCJpc3MiOiJmZWF0aGVycyIsInN1YiI6ImFub255bW91cyJ9 HWk7qJ0uK6SEi8qSeeB6-TGslDlZOTpG51U6kVi8nYc        -H  content-type  application x-www-form-urlencoded        --data-binary    home limitless Downloads iRoute Masters - Workers csv

User · Answer

After a lot of tries this command worked for me   curl -v -F filename image jpg -F upload  image jpg http   localhost 8080 api upload

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