How do I POST form data with UTF-8 encoding by using curl?

Question

I would like to POST (send) some form data to a webserver using cURL on a terminal-prompt.

This is what I got so far:

curl --data-ascii "content=derinhält&date=asdf" http://myserverurl.com/api/v1/somemethod

The problem is that the umlaute ("äöü") are replaced by "?" when I receive the post request on the server.

I think I need to use an UTF-8 encoding for the POST request.

Does anybody know how I can achieve this?

Possible dup of: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10172327/linux-curl-save-as-utf-8 — Nir Alfasi, Sep 19 '12 at 06:32
I don't think so. Your comment is about GET requests and UTF-8 decoding. My question is about POST requests and UTF-8 encoding. — ashiaka, Sep 19 '12 at 06:38
Show us the `bin2hex($content)` value of what you're receiving on the server. — deceze, Sep 19 '12 at 06:40
I also used tcpdump to look into the request: `bcdeäöüabcde` becomes `6263 6465 c3a4 c3b6 c3bc 6162 6364 65` — ashiaka, Sep 19 '12 at 06:58

score 44 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 30 '18 at 07:51

44

You CAN use UTF-8 in the POST request, all you need is to specify the charset in your request.

You should use this request:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8" --data-ascii "content=derinhält&date=asdf" http://myserverurl.com/api/v1/somemethod

edited Sep 30 '18 at 07:51

timothymctim

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answered Feb 03 '14 at 06:26

Kirill Smirnov

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Specifying a "urlencoded" Content-Type with non-URL-encoded content seems wrong to me. Rather use `--data-urlencode` and in case the text is not UTF-8 encoded, you can use `"content=$(echo -n "derinhält" | iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8)"` – rudi Dec 09 '19 at 13:30
I just experienced that at least certain server-side frameworks like the Java/Scala Play framework expects the "Charset" with an upper case "C", otherwise they do not detect the encoding. So, it must be `curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; Charset=utf-8"...` – Dirk Hillbrecht Feb 27 '23 at 08:44

How do I POST form data with UTF-8 encoding by using curl?

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