Why is curl truncating this query string?

Question

I'm sure the answer to this is going to be some painfully obvious character encoding issue...

I'm using curl on the command line to test some endpoints in a python app. The endpoint takes url params of latitude and longitude. Nothing too special. I put in the command:

curl -v -L http://localhost:5000/pulse/?lat=41.225&lon=-73.1

Server responds, with verbose curl output:

* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 5000 (#0)
> GET /pulse/?lat=41.225 HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.21.6 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.21.6 OpenSSL/1.0.0e zlib/1.2.3.4 libidn/1.22 librtmp/2.3
> Host: localhost:5000
> Accept: */*
> 
* HTTP 1.0, assume close after body
< HTTP/1.0 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR
< Content-Type: application/json
< Content-Length: 444
< Server: Werkzeug/0.8.1 Python/2.7.2+
< Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:06:29 GMT
< 
{
    "msg": "TypeError: float() argument must be a string or a number", 
    "flag": 0, 
    "stack": [
        "Traceback (most recent call last):", 
        "  File \"engine.py\", line 139, in dispatch_request", 
        "    return getattr(self, 'action_'+endpoint)(request, **values)", 
        "  File \"engine.py\", line 818, in action_getpulse", 
        "    lon = float(request.args.get('lon'))"
    ], 
    "err": 1
* Closing connection #0
}
[1]+  Done

On the second line of that dump, it's obvious that the second param, lon, isn't being sent. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Probably unrelated to the original question, but if I was missing part of the query string I would return a 400 or something else, not a 500. — Michael Munsey, Oct 10 '19 at 19:22

score 290 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 02 '20 at 15:17

290

The answer to the question, "what am I doing wrong," is that the shell sees the ampersand (&) and thinks that's the end of the command (and puts it into the background). You need to quote it, which is why the answers that quoted the string work. You could just as easily run this:

curl -v -L "http://localhost:5000/pulse?lat=41.225&lon=-73.1"

edited Jul 02 '20 at 15:17

avi.elkharrat

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answered May 21 '12 at 19:10

Bob Kimble

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I've been trying that on gitbash under windows without much success – avi.elkharrat Jul 02 '20 at 15:19
@avi.elkharrat try using a caret before your ampersands e.g., `^&`, not sure why this works but it just did for me using WSL2 git-bash. You'll still need the string around the URL too. – Harley Lang Jan 22 '23 at 11:37

score 37 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

37

I think you can try this:

 curl -v -L -d "lat=41.225&lon=-73.1" http://localhost:5000/pulse

by default, this calls POST. If you want to send a GET request

 curl -v -L -G -d "lat=41.225&lon=-73.1" http://localhost:5000/pulse

More...
and since you're using localhost, if you were to use https, you'd probably want to include -k as an option to ignore certificate errors

Thanks to Ross for pointing this.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

Community

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answered Feb 01 '12 at 17:26

Nishant

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Would work if this was post, but unfortunately the params have to be passed as url variables over GET. – DeaconDesperado Feb 01 '12 at 17:28
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even in your case (as in question) did you try surrounding your URL with query string with double quote? – Nishant Feb 01 '12 at 17:33
and since you're using localhost, if you were to use https, you'd probably want to include -k as an option to ignore certificate errors. – Ross Dec 29 '12 at 16:21
None of those methods work for me. Passing a string and it always comes over as blank. Sending to Grizzly server. – user3217883 Mar 13 '18 at 16:14

Why is curl truncating this query string?

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