Convert curl request into http request? - linux

Question

I am trying to convert the curl request below into an HTTP request for the postman tool. The postman tool might not really matter in this question. Please tell me how I can convert curl to http.
curl -X POST -i 'https://a-webservice.com' -H X-apiKey:jamesBond007 -d MESSAGE-TYPE="pub.controller.user.created" -d PAYLOAD='a json object goes here!'
What I tried/learned:
- Set headers content-type: json/application, X-apiKey
from curl docs, -d option means we need to set content-type application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Postman lets me set the request body using ONLY 1 of the 4 options- form-data, x-www-form-urlencoded, raw, binary. Can you show how I can convert the two -d options of curl into these options ?
I am confused how to put it all together.
Thanks!

Answer 1

The format of application/x-www-form-urlencoded data is just the same as a query string, so:
MESSAGE-TYPE=pub.controller.user.created&PAYLOAD=a json object goes here!
To confirm, you can dump the request data with curl itself, using the --trace-ascii option:
curl --trace-ascii - -X POST -i 'https://a-webservice.com' \
-H X-apiKey:jamesBond007 -d MESSAGE-TYPE="pub.controller.user.created" \
-d PAYLOAD='a json object goes here!'
--trace-ascii takes a filename as an argument but if you give it - it will dump to stdout.
The output for the above invocation will include something like this:
=> Send header, 168 bytes (0xa8)
0000: POST / HTTP/1.1
0011: Host: example.com
0024: User-Agent: curl/7.51.0
003d: Accept: */*
004a: X-apiKey:jamesBond007
0061: Content-Length: 73
0075: Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
00a6:
=> Send data, 73 bytes (0x49)
0000: MESSAGE-TYPE=pub.controller.user.created&PAYLOAD=a json object g
0040: oes here!
== Info: upload completely sent off: 73 out of 73 bytes
So the same as what’s confirmed in the answer at Convert curl request into http request? that uses nc, but confirmed just using curl itself, with the --trace-ascii option.

Answer 2

I don't know much about Postman. But I captured what's being sent in a file named /tmp/ncout. Based on this, we see that the Content-Type being sent is application/x-www-form-urlencoded, as you determined, and that the payload being sent is MESSAGE-TYPE=pub.controller.user.created&PAYLOAD=a json object goes here!.
Does that help?
alewin#gobo ~ $ nc -l 8888 >/tmp/ncout 2>&1 </dev/null &
[1] 15259
alewin#gobo ~ $ curl -X POST -i 'http://localhost:8888/' -H X-apiKey:jamesBond007 -d MESSAGE-TYPE="pub.controller.user.created" -d PAYLOAD='a json object goes here!'
curl: (52) Empty reply from server
[1]+ Done nc -l 8888 > /tmp/ncout 2>&1 < /dev/null
alewin#gobo ~ $ cat /tmp/ncout
POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8888
User-Agent: curl/7.43.0
Accept: */*
X-apiKey:jamesBond007
Content-Length: 73
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
MESSAGE-TYPE=pub.controller.user.created&PAYLOAD=a json object goes here!alewin#gobo ~ $

Answer 3

Here's an example of how to do this urlencode with python:
Python 2.7.6 (default, Oct 26 2016, 20:30:19)
[GCC 4.8.4] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> data = {'MESSAGE-TYPE': "pub.controller.user.created", 'PAYLOAD': 'a json object goes here!'}
> from urllib import urlencode
> urlencode(data)
PAYLOAD=a+json+object+goes+here%21&MESSAGE-TYPE=pub.controller.user.created