JSON output from /api/query using curl?

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1

Hello,
I’m attempting to obtain the output via JSON for this query:

I have this stored as ‘rel.txt’ -

(name of it | "n/a", ids of it, hostname of it, value of result from (bes property "Local Time Zone - Unix") of it | "n/a") of bes computers whose (exists value of result from (bes property "Local Time Zone - Unix") of it)

Using the curl example:

curl -v --data-urlencode "relevance@rel.txt" -i -k -X POST -u $USER:${PASS} "https://${SERVER}:52311/api/query"

The query works fine, but I was hoping to get the output as JSON? I have tried updating the query to use:

"https://${SERVER}:52311/api/query?output=json"

But it still returns XML. I also tried to randomly put output=json in the rel.txt but that also didnt work :slight_smile:

Thanks!

2

Very close. I really dislike using ‘curl’ for REST API, normally I’d suggest using Python or PowerShell or anything else really, but it looks like you’re already putting a lot of best-practice into this (like putting the query in an external file and letting curl url-encode it for you), so congratulations.

One of the main issues is in how GET differs from POST. When we GET, all the parameters (the relevance=some_query, output=json) have to be URL-encoded and put into the URL.

When we POST, it behaves like HTML form data - the client sends one or more key/value pairs to the server, encoded as form data. When you give Curl the parameter “relevance@rel.txt”, what you’re saying is that for the POST data the “relevance” key will be provided by the rel.txt file, and Curl submits it as “relevance=‘whatever is in the file’”

There are probably a couple of different ways to handle this in curl.
The method which which I’m more familar is to add another ‘-d’ parameter, so “output=json” is sent as another value in the form POST:

> type query.txt
now

curl -k -u %BESUSER%:%BESPWD% -X POST -d "output=json" --data-urlencode "relevance@query.txt" https://bes-root.l
ocal:52311/api/query

{"result":["Wed, 30 Oct 2024 07:30:12 -0500"],"plural":false,"type":"time","evaltime_ms":0}
3

Thanks for the reply and feedback, that is working fine and makes sense.

I do plan to port these to perl rather than python as I do not have python experience.

Regards,

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