How do I POST XML data with curl

Question

I want to post XML data with cURL. I don't care about forms like said in How do I make a post request with curl.

I want to post XML content to some webservice using cURL command line interface. Something like:

curl -H "text/xml" -d "<XmlContainer xmlns='sads'..." http://myapiurl.com/service.svc/

The above sample however cannot be processed by the service.

---

Reference example in C#:

WebRequest req = HttpWebRequest.Create("http://myapiurl.com/service.svc/");
req.Method = "POST";
req.ContentType = "text/xml";
using(Stream s = req.GetRequestStream())
{
    using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(s))
        sw.Write(myXMLcontent);
}
using (Stream s = req.GetResponse().GetResponseStream())
{
    using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(s))
        MessageBox.Show(sr.ReadToEnd());
}

Solution 1

-H "text/xml" isn't a valid header. You need to provide the full header:

-H "Content-Type: text/xml" 

Solution 2

I prefer the following command-line options:

cat req.xml | curl -X POST -H 'Content-type: text/xml' -d @- http://www.example.com

or

curl -X POST -H 'Content-type: text/xml' -d @req.xml http://www.example.com

or

curl -X POST -H 'Content-type: text/xml'  -d '<XML>data</XML>' http://www.example.com 

Solution 3

It is simpler to use a file (req.xml in my case) with content you want to send -- like this:

curl -H "Content-Type: text/xml" -d @req.xml -X POST http://localhost/asdf

You should consider using type 'application/xml', too (differences explained here)

Alternatively, without needing making curl actually read the file, you can use cat to spit the file into the stdout and make curl to read from stdout like this:

cat req.xml | curl -H "Content-Type: text/xml" -d @- -X POST http://localhost/asdf

Both examples should produce identical service output.

Solution 4

Have you tried url-encoding the data ? cURL can take care of that for you :

curl -H "Content-type: text/xml" --data-urlencode "<XmlContainer xmlns='sads'..." http://myapiurl.com/service.svc/

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