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I have this line in a GitHub Action:

curl https://api.github.com/repos/JJ/raku-advent-calendar-article-2019/issues/$ENV:ISSUE/comments -H "Authorization: token $ENV:TOKEN"  -H "Content-Type: application/json" --data $output

I haven't found a way to assign values to $data to make it work. GitHub Actions, or Powershell, or both, cut it, generally at a quote, but I really couldn't find out what it does and where.

This was the last I tried:

'{ `"body`": `"Merry Xmas to you too!`"}'

Note the Powershell-escapes for the double quotes. This returned this error:

curl: (6) Could not resolve host: Xmas

So, for some reason, it stopped at Merry. Any idea?

This question is similar, however, they are not using a variable to hold the result, which I need.

jjmerelo
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  • As an aside: The [linked question's accepted answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/24929803/45375) doesn't actually work, and the basic problem is the same as here. – mklement0 Dec 04 '19 at 18:41
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    Curl is actually an alias for invoke-webrequest in powershell for windows. – js2010 Dec 04 '19 at 18:50
  • Good point, @js2010, but the syntax of the command in the question and the error message imply that it is the `curl` utility (external program) that is being used. – mklement0 Dec 04 '19 at 21:32

2 Answers2

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If you are using PowerShell, use the native PowerShell functions, like Invoke-RestMethod, which accept PowerShell data structures instead of worrying about serialization/deserialization.

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $Uri -Headers @{Authorization = "token $env:TOKEN"; "Content-Type" = "application/json"} -Body @{body = "Merry Xmas to you too!"}
twinlakes
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2

  • '...' are verbatim strings in PowerShell, so embedded " require no escaping - your ` chars. are treated as literals.

  • However, sadly, PowerShell's handling of embedded " when calling external programs such as curl is fundamentally broken, requiring you to \-escape them:

$jsonForCurl = '{ \"body\": \"Merry Xmas to you too!\" }'

To apply this escaping to an existing string value, use the following:

$json = '{ "body": "Merry Xmas to you too!" }'
$jsonForCurl = $json -replace '"', '\"'

See this answer for how to apply this technique to expandable strings ("...").

This long-standing problem, which cannot be fixed without breaking existing code, is discussed in this GitHub issue and this GitHub documentation issue.

mklement0
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