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powershellcurlescapingquoting

Powershell: passing json string to curl

I'm trying to pass a JSON string from within a powershell script to the build.phonegap.com api, using curl.
According to phonegap's forum, when running on a Windows machine, the JSON data has to be formatted as:

curl.exe -ku user@email:mypass -X PUT -d "data={\"password\":\"keypass\"}" https://build.phonegap.com/api/v1/key

Indeed, this does run fine when invoked from the command line.
However, when I try to invoke this from within a powershell script, the double quotes seem to be stripped.

So far, I have tried:

  • Putting the JSON in single quoted string:
curl.exe -ku user@email:mypass -X PUT -d '"data={\"password\":\"keypass\"}"'  https://build.phonegap.com/api/v1/key
  • Putting the JSON in single quoted string, without the DOS escape backslashes:
curl.exe -ku user@email:mypass -X PUT -d '"data={"password":"keypass"}"'  https://build.phonegap.com/api/v1/key
  • Putting the JSON in single quoted string, escaping the double quotes and backslashes (DOS style with a backslash):
curl.exe -ku user@email:mypass -X PUT -d '\"data={\\\"password\\\":\\\"keypass\\\"}\"'  https://build.phonegap.com/api/v1/key
  • Putting the JSON in a double quoted string, escaping the double quotes with the powershell backtick character (`):
curl.exe -ku user@email:mypass -X PUT -d "`"data={\`"password\`":\`"build*2014`\`"}`""  https://build.phonegap.com/api/v1/key

Any idea how to achieve this?

Thanks for your time, Koen

Solution

  • Try using the --% operator to put PowerShell into simple (dumb) argument parsing mode:

    curl.exe --% -ku user@email:mypass -X PUT -d "data={\"password\":\"keypass\"}" https://build.phonegap.com/api/v1/key

    This is quite often useful for invoking exes with argument syntax that runs afoul of PowerShell's argument syntax. This does require PowerShell V3 or higher.