curl with json array

Question

The first command works and the second doesn't. What do I need to change to allow the json array to work? Thank you in advance.

command #1:

curl -d '{"uid":"TEST", "object":"TEST"}' \
        -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
        -X POST http://WEBSERVER/api/v1/inventory

command #2

curl -d '{"uid":"TEST","object":["server1", "server2", "server3"]}' \
        -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
        -X POST http://WEBSERVER/api/v1/inventory

For future note -- backticks are for code formatting strings which are less than a single line in length. Use the {} button in the editor with a multi-line block selected, or add four spaces before each line, for longer segments. This gets you colorized syntax highlighting and generally better-looking formatting. — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 17:26
That said, in terms of what content a server allows -- that's the server's decision; it's not something bash or curl has any say in. If you can reproduce a problem with a publicly-available service that is explicitly documented to allow arrays, that would put us in a better place (in terms of being able to reproduce a minimal reproducible example -- roughly, the shortest possible code that someone else can run to see a problem themselves, or use to test whether their proposed answer actually fixes a problem). — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 17:34
(Also, "doesn't work" is not much of a description to go off of -- it doesn't tell us if you got an error from curl itself or from the remote server, f/e, and that distinction is critical. Please be sure that you provide the exact error you're asking about, going forward). — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 17:35

nbari · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-12 18:59:20Z

Your curl syntax is fine, you could test by using httpbin.org, for example:

$ curl -d '{"uid":"TEST","object":["server1", "server2", "server3"]}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -X POST http://httpbin.org/post

Returns:

{
  "args": {},
  "data": "{\"uid\":\"TEST\",\"object\":[\"server1\", \"server2\", \"server3\"]}",
  "files": {},
  "form": {},
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*",
    "Connection": "close",
    "Content-Length": "57",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "User-Agent": "curl/7.54.0"
  },
  "json": {
    "object": [
      "server1",
      "server2",
      "server3"
    ],
    "uid": "TEST"
  },
  "origin": "x.x.x.x",
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/post"
}

You indeed could pipe the result and verify the output with your input:

$ curl -d '{"uid":"TEST","object":["server1", "server2", "server3"]}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -X POST http://httpbin.org/post -s | jq -r '.data'

It will print:

{"uid":"TEST","object":["server1", "server2", "server3"]}

Probably the server you are using to post data don't accept your request, check the returned status code, could give a clue, maybe is a 400 (bad request) or a 406 (not acceptable) etc, just in case here is a list of possible status codes.

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