CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xmlpostcurlmultipartform-data
wst
wst

Reputation: 11773

CURL multi-part POST non file-based data

Using curl, I am trying to POST multiple arbitrary XML documents to an endpoint that expects 1 or more documents (the specific goal here being to test "or more").

I have seen some SO answers suggest that using -F (instead of -d) with throwaway key names will instruct curl to generate the correct multipart header and message body boundaries and use the keys' values as parts in the message body, in place of the file content:

curl -u user:pass -k -X POST \
  -F key1='<Document>Document 1</Document>' \
  -F key2='<Document>Document 2</Document>' \
  https://localhost:1234/some/endpoint

However, curl balks that the key values are not real file names:

curl: (26) couldn't open file "<Document>Document 1</Document>"

Is that not a valid way to do it? Is there something wrong with my curl command? I didn't have any success getting curl to execute a multipart POST using -d either.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 74

Answers (1)

wst
wst

Reputation: 11773

POSTing two concatenated XML elements as a single message body (not as multipart) works. However, this is unexpected, since multiple root elements in XML is invalid:

curl -u user:pass -k -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: text/xml" \
  -d '<Document>Document 1</Document><Document>Document 2</Document>' \
  https://localhost:1234/some/endpoint

Upvotes: 1

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