How to use curl with exec nodejs

Question

I try to do the following in node js

var command = " -d '{'title': 'Test' }' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://125.196.19.210:3030/widgets/test";  

    exec(['curl', command], function(err, out, code) {
        if (err instanceof Error)
        throw err;
        process.stderr.write(err);
        process.stdout.write(out);
        process.exit(code);
    });

It works when I do the below in command line.:
curl -d '{ "title": "Test" }' -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://125.196.19.210:3030/widgets/test

But when I do it in nodejs it tells me that

curl: no URL specified!
curl: try 'curl --help' or 'curl --manual' for more information
child process exited with code 2

Solution 1

The options parameter of the exec command is not there to contains your argv.

You could put your parameters directly with the child_process.exec function :

    var exec = require('child_process').exec;

    var args = " -d '{'title': 'Test' }' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://125.196.19.210:3030/widgets/test";

    exec('curl ' + args, function (error, stdout, stderr) {
      console.log('stdout: ' + stdout);
      console.log('stderr: ' + stderr);
      if (error !== null) {
        console.log('exec error: ' + error);
      }
    });

---

If you want to use the argv arguments,

you can use child_process.execFile function:

var execFile = require('child_process').execFile;

var args = ["-d '{'title': 'Test' }'", "-H 'Content-Type: application/json'", "http://125.196.19.210:3030/widgets/test"];

execFile('curl.exe', args, {},
  function (error, stdout, stderr) {
    console.log('stdout: ' + stdout);
    console.log('stderr: ' + stderr);
    if (error !== null) {
      console.log('exec error: ' + error);
    }
});

Solution 2

You can do it like so... You can easily swap out execSync with exec as in your above example.

#!/usr/bin/env node

var child_process = require('child_process');

function runCmd(cmd)
{
  var resp = child_process.execSync(cmd);
  var result = resp.toString('UTF8');
  return result;
}

var cmd = "curl -s -d '{'title': 'Test' }' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://125.196.19.210:3030/widgets/test";  
var result = runCmd(cmd);

console.log(result);

Solution 3

FWIW you can do the same thing natively in node with:

var http = require('http'),
    url = require('url');

var opts = url.parse('http://125.196.19.210:3030/widgets/test'),
    data = { title: 'Test' };
opts.headers = {};
opts.headers['Content-Type'] = 'application/json';

http.request(opts, function(res) {
  // do whatever you want with the response
  res.pipe(process.stdout);
}).end(JSON.stringify(data));

Comments

[etayluz]

I love curl - so much better than any node.js HTTP client

[Tino]

Can somebody please enlighten me, why this was downvoted? Thanks!

[mscdex]

For https, you would use the https module instead.

[Yves M.]

Sure but if you don't know URL schema in advance... it could be HTTP or HTTPS.. Also OP asked how to use curl, not how to download a file (better use fetch or axios)

[mscdex]

You can parse the url and check the protocol from the resulting object to know which built-in module to use.

[ajimix]

The original question was how to do it with curl, not with HTTP library