pass an array of headers to curl into a bash script

Question

I am working on a script which is a test suite that would check all invalid headers case using curl.

I created a bunch of functions which allows me to construct headers tupe (field_name: field_value) with default testing value.

build_foo_header() {
  local FOO_KN=${1:-'X-App-Name'}
  local FOO_KV=${2:-'MyApp'}
  echo $FOO_KN: $FOO_KV
}

I would like to create some arrays in functions with either missing headers or headers with invalid values to test my app behavior.

So i created a sample function as it :

build_headers_invalid_X_App_Name_Value() {
  HEADERS=()

  # this array should contain all other required headers
  HEADERS[0]=$(build_foo_header X-App-Name BadValue)
  # HEADERS[1]= header that is required with default value
  # and son on for all the remaning required headers

  echo "${HEADERS[@]/#/-H}" 
}

However i can't get curl how to pass that array to curl ?

$(curl $(build_headers_invalid_X_App_Name_Value) myURl)

Seems to send a request to the first header in the HEADERS array.

I have approximatively 10 required headers that's why I would like to script it that way.

chepner · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-23 18:50:00Z

1

The problem is by echoing "${HEADERS[@]/#/-H}", you lose any distinction between whitespace that occurred in an element of HEADERS and whitespace used to separate two elements in the output.

If you want to use a function, you need to just set a global array, then use that directly. No command substitution is needed or useful.

build_foo_header() {
  local FOO_KN=${1:-'X-App-Name'}
  local FOO_KV=${2:-'MyApp'}
  echo "$FOO_KN: $FOO_KV"
}

build_headers_invalid_X_App_Name_Value() {
  HEADERS=()

  # this array should contain all other required headers
  HEADERS[0]=$(build_foo_header X-App-Name BadValue)
  # HEADERS[1]= header that is required with default value
  # and son on for all the remaning required headers    
}

build_headers_invalid_X_App_Name_Value
curl "${HEADERS[@]/#/-H}" myUrl

answered Aug 23, 2016 at 18:50

chepner

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3 Comments

anchnk Over a year ago

Thank you very much for the detailed answer. I will have lot of build_headers_XXX functions to handle each use case of missing or misspelled headers so I would like the array to be local to the function and then figure a way to pass it to the curl command (there will a bunch of curl call in my script). Sorry it's a bit more than the OP but if you won't mind give me hints :)

chepner Over a year ago

If you could pass the result as a string (via the output of your function), arrays wouldn't need to have been invented. bash simply doesn't have anything more complicated than a string that you can pass around as a first-class value.

chepner Over a year ago

You could run the function and curl in a subshell, as long as there isn't anything else you need to make global: (build_headers; curl "${HEADERS[@]/#/-H}" myUrl). This way, HEADERS is global to the subshell in which the commands run, but disappears after that subshell exits.

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