POST JSON data to simple rails application with curl

Question

I set up a simple new rails application with model entry, with attributes title and content using scaffolding.

now I am trying to use curl to POST the JSON data (rather than using the browser).

the following seems to work (i.e. successfully posted with null data):

curl --verbose --header "Accept: application/json" --header "Content-type: application/json" --request POST --data "" http://localhost:3000/entries

the following does not work:

curl --verbose --header "Accept: application/json" --header "Content-type: application/json" --request POST --data "{'content':'I belong to AAA','title':'AAA'}" http://localhost:3000/entries

I have tried many variations. the errors I get are mostly host not found or unexpected token at the JSON data.

Answer 1

To go along with what Jonathan said, the Post is now sending the data to the EntriesController. Now in your create action you have to get the data from the params hash. I am going to assume you are doing it the railsy way and so you would do something like this:

    curl -d 'entry[content]=I belong to AAA' -d entry[title]=AAA http://localhost:3000/entries'

In your controller

    Entry.create(params[:entry])

This says grab the "entry" data from the params hash (created by rails for you) and pass it as a parameter to Entry to initialize a new Object. "create" will do a "new" and "save" for you in one method call.

Answer 2

I ran a test and got the error MultiJson::DecodeError (743: unexpected token at '{'content':'I belong to AAA','title':'AAA'}'):

JSON requires double quotes for keys and strings, not single quotes. Try --data '{"content":"I belong to AAA","title":"AAA"}'