cURL – Post JSON data to Spring REST

This article shows you how to use cURL command to POST JSON data to a Spring REST API.

1. Spring REST

A Simple Spring REST API to validate a login.

LoginController.java

package com.favtuts.controller;

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders;
import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;
import org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.*;

@Controller
public class LoginController {

    private final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(LoginController.class);

    @PostMapping("/api/login")
    public ResponseEntity<?> login(@RequestBody Login login) {

        logger.debug("login : {}", login);

        //validate login here

        return new ResponseEntity("Successfully login", new HttpHeaders(), HttpStatus.OK);

    }

}

Login.java

package com.favtuts.controller;

public class Login {

    String username;
    String password;

    //getters and setters
}

2. cURL Post JSON

To test above REST API, you can use the cURL command to post a JSON data like this :

2.1 On Windows, you need to escape the double quotes

Terminal

c:\> curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d {\"username\":\"favtuts\",\"password\":\"abc\"} http://localhost:8080/api/login/
Successfully login

2.2 For *nix or Mac OSX, add a single quote like this :

Terminal

$ curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{"username":"favtuts","password":"abc"}' http://localhost:8080/api/login/
Successfully login

2.3 --help

Terminal

$ curl --help

...
-d HTTP POST data
-H Pass custom header LINE to server
-X Specify request command to use

2.4 Display detail with curl -v

Terminal

c:\> curl -v -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d {\"username\":\"favtuts\",\"password\":\"abc\"} http://localhost:8080/api/login/
Note: Unnecessary use of -X or --request, POST is already inferred.
* timeout on name lookup is not supported
*   Trying ::1...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 8080 (#0)
> POST /api/login/ HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8080
> User-Agent: curl/7.52.1
> Accept: */*
> Content-Type: application/json
> Content-Length: 38
>
* upload completely sent off: 38 out of 38 bytes
< HTTP/1.1 200
< Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8
< Content-Length: 18
< Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2017 08:00:03 GMT
<
Successfully login* Curl_http_done: called premature == 0
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact

References

1. Wikipedia – cURL
2. Building REST services with Spring
3. cURL – POST request examples