Create JSON Gist (conflict) - json

Question

I want to create a Gist containing a JSON (valid one, I checked) with curl command as described here.
I tried first this script :
configText=$(cat jsonFile.json)
generate_post_data()
{
cat <<EOF
{
"description": "the description for this gist",
"public": true,
"files": {
"file1.txt": {
"content": $configText
}
}
}
EOF
}
curlBody="$(generate_post_data)"
curlResponse=$(curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '$curlBody' https://api.github.com/gists)
Which gave me the error Problems parsing JSON, so I tried passing the file directly in the command:
curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -data-binary #jsonFile.json https://api.github.com/gists
But I'm getting the same error. I know that this must be a conflict between the JSON body of the POST request and the JSON of my file (quotes, brackets...).
How can I send a clean JSON file to Gist ?

Answer 1

For the issues in your script :
in your curl request, you use single quotes around your bash variable in POST -d '$curlBody', use double quote to expand it : POST -d "$curlBody"
content is a text field : "content": $configText to "content": "$configText"
configText can have new lines and unescaped double quotes " which break your content JSON data. You could use the following to escape quotes and remove new lines :
configText=$(cat test.json | sed 's/\"/\\\"/g' | tr -d '\n')
The following example build your gist request with jq JSON parser/builder, not that this example will not preserve new lines in your input :
#!/bin/bash
ACCESS_TOKEN="YOUR_ACCESSS_TOKEN"
description="the description for this gist"
filename="file1.txt"
curlBody=$(jq --arg desc "$description" --arg filename "$filename" '.|
{ "description": $desc,
"public": true,
"files": {
($filename) : {
"content": tostring
}
}
}' jsonFile.json)
curl -v -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Token $ACCESS_TOKEN" \
-X POST -d "$curlBody" https://api.github.com/gists
The following will preserve new lines in your json input by replacing new lines with \\n :
#!/bin/bash
ACCESS_TOKEN="YOUR_ACCESSS_TOKEN"
description="the description for this gist. There are also some quotes 'here' and \"here\" in that description"
public="true"
filename="file1.txt"
desc=$(echo "$description" | sed 's/"/\\"/g' | sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/\\n/g')
json=$(cat test.json | sed 's/"/\\"/g' | sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/\\n/g')
curl -v -H "Content-Type: text/json; charset=utf-8" \
-H "Authorization: Token $ACCESS_TOKEN" \
-X POST https://api.github.com/gists -d #- << EOF
{
"description": "$desc",
"public": "$public",
"files": {
"$filename" : {
"content": "$json"
}
}
}
EOF
Note that your access token must have the gist scope