Load a file via JHipster REST service using HTTPie or Curl

Question

I have made a JHipster (v5.3.1) app that has an entity Attachment that contains a Blob field called fileAttachment. Using the generated Angular 6 web front end I am able to load files to the app. I would like to do the same using command line (either HTTPie or curl).

The jdl definition of Attachment is:

/**
 * An entity to store attachments
 */
entity Attachment {
  /** The name of the attachment */
  fileName String required,
  /** the attachment */
  attachedFile Blob required
}

The JHipster generator constructs an Attachment.java and AttachmentService.java and an AttachmentResource.java which I have not modified at all.

Using the web front end the following statements are logged when a file is loaded:

2018-09-18 09:18:11.501 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] c.k.kapture.aop.logging.LoggingAspect    : Enter: com.kaleido.kapture.web.rest.AttachmentResource.createAttachment() with argument[s] = [Attachment{id=null, fileName='test', attachedFile='[B@396897d6', attachedFileContentType='application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet'}]
2018-09-18 09:18:11.502 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] c.k.kapture.web.rest.AttachmentResource  : REST request to save Attachment : Attachment{id=null, fileName='test', attachedFile='[B@396897d6', attachedFileContentType='application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet'}
2018-09-18 09:18:11.504 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] c.k.kapture.aop.logging.LoggingAspect    : Enter: com.kaleido.kapture.service.AttachmentService.save() with argument[s] = [Attachment{id=null, fileName='test', attachedFile='[B@396897d6', attachedFileContentType='application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet'}]
2018-09-18 09:18:11.518 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] c.k.kapture.service.AttachmentService    : Request to save Attachment : Attachment{id=null, fileName='test', attachedFile='[B@396897d6', attachedFileContentType='application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet'}
    Hibernate: call next value for hibernate_sequence
2018-09-18 09:18:11.562 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] o.j.core.metamodel.type.TypeFactory      : javersType of class com.kaleido.kapture.domain.Attachment inferred as EntityType
2018-09-18 09:18:11.564 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] o.j.core.metamodel.type.TypeFactory      : javersType of class java.lang.Long inferred as ValueType, it's used as id-property type
2018-09-18 09:18:11.597 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] o.j.core.metamodel.type.TypeFactory      : javersType of class [B spawned as ArrayType from prototype ArrayType{baseType:'class [Ljava.lang.Object;'}
2018-09-18 09:18:11.599 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] o.javers.core.graph.ObjectGraphBuilder   : live graph assembled, object nodes: 1, entities: 1, valueObjects: 0
2018-09-18 09:18:11.695  INFO 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] org.javers.core.Javers                   : Commit(id:1.0, snapshots:1, author:admin, changes - NewObject:1), done in 144 millis (diff:71, persist:73)
2018-09-18 09:18:12.096 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] c.k.kapture.aop.logging.LoggingAspect    : Exit: com.kaleido.kapture.service.AttachmentService.save() with result = Attachment{id=1001, fileName='test', attachedFile='[B@396897d6', attachedFileContentType='application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet'}
    Hibernate: insert into attachment (attached_file, attached_file_content_type, file_name, id) values (?, ?, ?, ?)
2018-09-18 09:18:12.104 DEBUG 14151 --- [  XNIO-2 task-7] c.k.kapture.aop.logging.LoggingAspect    : Exit: com.kaleido.kapture.web.rest.AttachmentResource.createAttachment() with result = <201 Created,Attachment{id=1001, fileName='test', attachedFile='[B@396897d6', attachedFileContentType='application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet'},{Location=[/api/attachments/1001], X-kaptureApp-alert=[A new attachment is created with identifier 1001], X-kaptureApp-params=[1001]}>

Using HTTPie I am able to authenticate and get a JWT token

http POST :8080/api/authenticate password=**** username=admin

However, it is not obvious how to POST the file:

http -v --form POST :8080/api/attachments/ \
    'Authorization:Bearer ***.***.***' \
    fileName=test.txt \
    [email protected] \
    attachedFileContentType=text/plain

results in:

POST /api/attachments/ HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Authorization: Bearer ****.****.****
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 404
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; 
boundary=087aa239fc6f4eb197fa883424e2bdc3
Host: localhost:8080
User-Agent: HTTPie/0.9.9

--087aa239fc6f4eb197fa883424e2bdc3
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="fileName"

test.txt
--087aa239fc6f4eb197fa883424e2bdc3
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="attachedFileContentType"

text/plain
--087aa239fc6f4eb197fa883424e2bdc3
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="attachedFile"; 
filename="test.txt"
Content-Type: text/plain

test test test

--087aa239fc6f4eb197fa883424e2bdc3--

HTTP/1.1 415 Unsupported Media Type
Accept: application/octet-stream, text/plain, application/xml, text/xml, application/x-www-form-urlencoded, application/x-jackson-smile, application/*+xml, multipart/form-data, application/json, application/cbor, application/*+json, */*
Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/problem+json
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2018 14:27:08 GMT
Expires: 0
Pragma: no-cache
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block

{
    "detail": "Content type 'multipart/form-data;boundary=087aa239fc6f4eb197fa883424e2bdc3;charset=UTF-8' not supported",
    "message": "error.http.415",
    "path": "/api/attachments/",
    "status": 415,
    "title": "Unsupported Media Type",
    "type": "https://www.jhipster.tech/problem/problem-with-message"
}

How should I construct the POST?

Update

When I view what is happening in Chrome developer view I see that the request payload is

{"fileName":"test.txt","attachedFileContentType":"text/plain","attachedFile":"dGVzdCB0ZXN0IHRlc3QK"}

It's not clear where the attachedFile value is coming from?

The request headers generated by the Web UI are:

POST /api/attachments HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:8080
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 100
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
Accept: application/json, text/plain, */*
Origin: http://localhost:8080
X-XSRF-TOKEN: *****************
Authorization: Bearer ****.****.****.****
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_6) 
AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/69.0.3497.92 Safari/537.36
Content-Type: application/json
Referer: http://localhost:8080/
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9
Cookie: 
    access_token=****.****.****; session_token=****; XSRF-TOKEN=*****; Idea-1c443776=2050c190-4f64-4a09-a50c-a0ef97b6a9da; io=p4GYHllrvXuakjfbAAAA

Answer 1

The solution is to Base64 encode the file and provide that string as the value of attachedFile (Thanks Jon Ruddlell for the tip).

The following call will create a record with an attachment called test.txt with the base64 encoded content "test test test" and with text/plain as the content type.

http POST :8080/api/attachments/ \
  'Authorization:Bearer ****.****.****' \
  fileName=test.txt \
  attachedFile=dGVzdCB0ZXN0IHRlc3QK \
  attachedFileContentType=text/plain

For any real file it is not realistic to include the Base64 encoding of the file on the command line. Therefore you should Base64 encode the contents to a file and then reference the file with http thereby making it part of the JSON body.

Encode a file (schema.png) and write the encoding to another file (schema.png.base64):

openssl base64 -in schema.png > schema.png.base64

POST the file with the name schema2.png and the media type image/png

http POST :8080/api/attachments/ \  
  'Authorization:Bearer ****.****.***' \
   fileName=schema2.png \
   [email protected] \
   attachedFileContentType=image/png