I hope I’m not alone on this but I find the cURL documentation hard to follow and short on examples.
My goal was to mimic some HTTP XML posting traffic a server gets from IoT devices. Google Chrome Postman (or Postman REST Client) reproduction is very easy and will send.
TL;DR
ensure you have an empty --header "Content-Type:" header: this ensures that cURL doesn’t add one and does not mess on how the content is being transferred.
use the --data or --data-binary command with an @ to post a file as body.
if you want --write-out then be sure you have a recent cURL version.
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This will hang the connection: somehow cURL will never notify the upload is done and the HTTP server keeps waiting. When you put --verbose or --trace-ascii - on the command-line you will see something like this before hanging: * upload completely sent off: 245 out of 245 bytes.
This will automatically add a Content-Length: 245 header and complete the transfer. But it will also add a Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded header causing the content not being posted as a body.
This will automatically ad a Content-Length: xxx header (way longer than 245) because it converts the request into a Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------------------------e1c0d47bac806954 one (the hex at the end differs) which is totally unlike what Postman does.
It is also unlike to what the HTTP server accepts.
It turns out that --data-ascii is exactly the same as --data and that --data-binary just skips some new-line conversion when compared to --data or --data-ascii. Contrary to the --data-raw documentation that suggest it is equivalent to --data-binary it seems --data-raw behaves exactly like --data and --data-ascii. Odd.
So these are all stuck with the Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded and I thought I was running out of options.
It posts exactly the same content as the IoT devices and Postman do.
Phew!
I tried to combine this with the --write-out (a.k.a. -w) option, but for older versions of cURL (I could reproduce with 7.34) that forces cURL back in to Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded mode so watch your cURL version!
Later I will put more research in chuncked transfer. Links that might help me: