Curl-convert to a simple http request? - http

Question

I have some curl request, in which i would like to build from it a basic POST request-authenticated (with headers etc), i couldn't find any tool that convert that :
curl -X POST 'https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/xxxxxxxxxxxxx/Calls.json' \
--data-urlencode 'To=xxxxxxx65542' \
--data-urlencode 'From=+xxxxxxx4215' \
-d 'Url=https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01' \
-d 'Method=GET' \
-d 'FallbackMethod=GET' \
-d 'StatusCallbackMethod=GET' \
-d 'Record=false' \
-u ACbe68cddxxxxxxxxxxxx3aba243cc4cdb:0f442xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
So how would my POST request should look like ?

Answer 1

Okay so i was trying to figure out how to send a text message from an ESP8266 nodeMcu v0.9 module. It is capable of working like an arduino with the arduino ide 1.6.4.
Anyways, I found http://textbelt.com and it only shows a simple CURL way of sending the text message.
This is the CURL message it wants you to send
$ curl -X POST http://textbelt.com/text \ -d number=5551234567 \ -d "message=I sent this message for free with textbelt.com"
So to convert to a normal HTTP POST command i did the following. (this works in Arduino IDE)
number and message are String objects.
String messageToSend = "number="+number+"&message="+message;
client.print("POST /text HTTP/1.1\r\n");
client.print("Host: textbelt.com\r\n");
client.print("Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n");
client.print("Content-Length: ");
client.print(messageToSend.length());
client.print("\r\n\r\n");
client.print(messageToSend);
At first i tried without the Content-Type but that didn't seem to work. So i had to add the type of content i was sending as well.
If you were to monitor the network traffic with say WireShark you would see
POST /text HTTP/1.1\r\n
Host: textbelt.com\r\n
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n
Content-Length: 48\r\n
\r\n
number=5551234567&message=this is a text message
I may have been able to use less text with text/plain as the content-type but i think it may need the application urlencoded type to work.
Hope this helps someone else trying to convert curl to http.

Answer 2

From the cURL man page :
-H, --header (HTTP) Extra header to use when getting a web page. You may specify any number of extra headers. Note that if you
should add a custom header that has the same name as one of the
internal ones curl would use, your externally set header will be
used instead of the internal one. This allows you to make even
trickier stuff than curl would nor‐ mally do. You should not replace
internally set headers without knowing perfectly well what you're
doing. Remove an internal header by giving a replacement without
content on the right side of the colon, as in: -H "Host:". If you send
the custom header with no-value then its header must be terminated
with a semicolon, such as -H "X-Custom- Header;" to send
"X-Custom-Header:".
curl will make sure that each header you add/replace is sent with the
proper end-of-line marker, you should thus not add that as a part of
the header content: do not add newlines or carriage returns, they will
only mess things up for you.
See also the -A, --user-agent and -e, --referer options.
This option can be used multiple times to add/replace/remove multiple
headers.
Amazon AWS makes heavy use of headers for authentication. A quick Google should lead to many examples such as this one from http://tmont.com/blargh/2014/1/uploading-to-s3-in-bash :
curl -X PUT -T "${file}" \
-H "Host: ${bucket}.s3.amazonaws.com" \
-H "Date: ${dateValue}" \
-H "Content-Type: ${contentType}" \
-H "Authorization: AWS ${s3Key}:${signature}" \
https://${bucket}.s3.amazonaws.com/${file}
All you need to do is adapt the AWS examples for your twilio use.
To make the example into a POST, just change PUT to POST and add your POST fields -d "field1=val1&field2=val2&field3=val3"

Answer 3

You can specify the headers using --header and the type of request (POST) by using -X / --request parameters.
Example:
curl --request POST --header "X-MyHeader: MyAuthenticatedHeader" www.stackoverflow.com
In your case it should be:
curl -X POST 'https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01/Accounts/xxxxxxxxxxxxx/Calls.json' \
--header 'X-MyHeader: MyAuthenticatedHeader' \
--data-urlencode 'To=xxxxxxx65542' \
--data-urlencode 'From=+xxxxxxx4215' \
-d 'Url=https://api.twilio.com/2010-04-01' \
-d 'Method=GET' \
-d 'FallbackMethod=GET' \
-d 'StatusCallbackMethod=GET' \
-d 'Record=false' \
-u ACbe68cddxxxxxxxxxxxx3aba243cc4cdb:0f442xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx