Bash - Curl (6) couldn't resolve host issue

Question

I am having a problem with my bash script. It is producing an error of

curl (6) couldn't resolve host

What have I done wrong?

The following is my bash script.

#!/bin/bash

string="$(mysql -u root -p Company 'select name from HR')"
url="http://www.company.com/company/hr/$string"

curl -F $url

Answer 1

According to the man curl, error 6 means "Couldn't resolve host. The given remote host was not resolved." so you will have to check if the hostname of the url is resolvable to an ip address.

when you need to submit data to a server, for example with the form below,

<form method="POST" enctype='multipart/form-data' action="upload.cgi">
  <input type=file name=upload>
  <input type=submit name=press value="OK">
</form>

you can do it curl with the following equivalent. (make sure the server that you submitted is ready to receive the data too)

curl -F upload=@localfilename -F press=OK [resolv-able url]

Answer 2

Try printing out the whole string/url. I believe it should have some problems in it.

Answer 3

And can you ping "www.company.com" (I'm assuming that's not the real name you're connecting to) at all?

And it might be worthwhile printing out the $url variable before you curl it since it may be malformed.

And one final thing. Are you sure you should be using -F? This appears to be automated form filling. Is it possible you wanted to "fail silently" option -f?