CouchDB cURL Windows Command Line Invalid JSON

json curl command-line couchdb
skinneejoe picture skinneejoe · Aug 19, 2013 · Viewed 13.8k times · Source

Running the following command from a Windows command line using cURL attempting to post a new document to an existing CouchDB database (named test) fails:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:5984/test" -d {"valid":"json"}

It returns the error:

{"error":"bad_request","reason":"invalid_json"}

The JSON is valid so what gives?

Answer

skinneejoe picture skinneejoe · Aug 19, 2013

The answer is related to the formatting of the JSON string on the command line. Even though it is proper JSON when you type it, the command line, it seems, must reformat it before sending it.(Maybe someone else can explain why it does this in more detail.) To fix this you need to escape your quotations in the command line like so:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST "http://127.0.0.1:5984/test" -d {"""valid""":"""json"""}

See the extra quotation marks? This should work and return "ok:true" with an id and revision number.

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