Pass the variable value to curl JSON

Question

I am trying to create a JIRA ticket using curl POST method, but the variable substitution is not happening properly in TODAY_DATE variable. If i remove that it is working fine. ANy hint on how this can be solved?

Below is my code where only TODAY_DATE substition isnt working and failing with below error

#!/bin/bash
JIRA_CREDS="XXX:YYY"
JIRA_PROJECT="OPS"
JIRA_URL="http://jira/jira/rest/api/2/issue/"
JIRA_CONTENT_TYPE="Content-Type: application/json"
DATE_1=`date +"%d/%b/%y %r" | cut -d":" -f1`
DATE_2=`date +"%d/%b/%y %r" | cut -d":" -f2`
DATE_3=`date +"%d/%b/%y %r" | cut -d":" -f3 | cut -d" " -f2`
TODAY_DATE=`echo "${DATE_1}:${DATE_2} ${DATE_3}"`
 curl -D- -u "$JIRA_CREDS" -X POST --data '{
 "fields": {
 "project":
 {
 "key": "'$JIRA_PROJECT'"
 },
 "summary": "Security patch update",
 "description": "The instances need to be updated via yum.",
 "customfield_13339": { "value": "Bamboo" },
 "customfield_13338": { "value": "Approved" } ,
 "customfield_13337": [{ "value": "Team" }],
 "customfield_13331": [{ "value": "SITTR" }],
 "customfield_13334": { "value": "'$TODAY_DATE'" },
 "issuetype": {
 "name": "Tech Task"
 }
 }
 }' -H "$JIRA_CONTENT_TYPE" "$JIRA_URL"
curl: (7) Failed to connect to 0.0.0.11: Invalid argument
curl: (23) Failed writing header

Answer 1

I'm going to ignore whatever quoting issues you may have and rewrite your script with the JSON construction tool jo.

#!/bin/sh
jira_creds='XXX:YYY'
jira_project='OPS'
jira_url='http://jira/jira/rest/api/2/issue/'
jira_content_type='Content-Type: application/json'
now=$( date +'%d/%b/%y %l:%M %p' )
json_data=$( jo -d . 

        fields.project.key="$jira_project" 

        fields.summary='Security patch update' 

        fields.description='The instances need to be updated via yum.' 

        fields.customfield_13339.value='Bamboo' 

        fields.customfield_13338.value='Approved' 

        fields.customfield_13337="$( jo -a "$( jo value='Team' )" )" 

        fields.customfield_13331="$( jo -a "$( jo value='SITTR' )" )" 

        fields.customfield_13334.value="$now" 

        fields.issuetype.name='Tech Task'
)
curl 

        -u "$jira_creds" 

        -X POST --data "$json_data" 

        -H "$jira_content_type" 

        "$jira_url"

The value of $json_data would be a properly formatted JSON document where all included variable data has been JSON-encoded if needed. Pretty-printed, it may look something like

{
  "fields": {
    "project": {
      "key": "OPS"
    },
    "summary": "Security patch update",
    "description": "The instances need to be updated via yum.",
    "customfield_13339": {
      "value": "Bamboo"
    },
    "customfield_13338": {
      "value": "Approved"
    },
    "customfield_13337": [
      {
        "value": "Team"
      }
    ],
    "customfield_13331": [
      {
        "value": "SITTR"
      }
    ],
    "customfield_13334": {
      "value": "05/May/21 11:32 PM"
    },
    "issuetype": {
      "name": "Tech Task"
    }
  }
}

---

And alternative way to create the JSON payload data is to start with a static YAML document (which is easy to write) and then insert the variable data into it with yq from https://kislyuk.github.io/yq/

json_data=$( yq \
        --arg proj "$jira_project" \
        '.fields.project.key |= $proj |
         .fields.customfield_13334.value |=
                (now|strflocaltime("%d/%b/%y %l:%M %p"))' <<'END_YAML'
fields:
  summary: Security patch update
  description: The instances need to be updated via yum.
  customfield_13339:
    value: Bamboo
  customfield_13338:
    value: Approved
  customfield_13337:
    - value: Team
  customfield_13331:
    - value: SITTR
  issuetype:
    name: Tech Task
END_YAML
)

Note that we let yq compute the timestamp here, so the shell variable $now is no longer needed in the script.

Answer 2

In your script, a couple of variable expansions are unquoted:

 "key": "'$JIRA_PROJECT'"

and

 "customfield_13334": { "value": "'$TODAY_DATE'" },

Those two lines should be, respectively:

"key": "'"$JIRA_PROJECT"'"

and

"customfield_13334": { "value": "'"$TODAY_DATE"'" },

As an aside, you may also write TODAY_DATE="${DATE_1}:${DATE_2} ${DATE_3}", saving an unneeded command substitution/echo. Or, better, TODAY_DATE=$(date +"%d/%b/%y %I:%M %p"), removing the need for the DATE_n variables.

The expansion of $TODAY_DATE includes space characters:

$ DATE_1=`date +"%d/%b/%y %r" | cut -d":" -f1`
$ DATE_2=`date +"%d/%b/%y %r" | cut -d":" -f2`
$ DATE_3=`date +"%d/%b/%y %r" | cut -d":" -f3 | cut -d" " -f2`
$ TODAY_DATE=`echo "${DATE_1}:${DATE_2} ${DATE_3}"`
$ printf '%s\n' "$TODAY_DATE"
05/May/21 10:06 PM

Most likely this means that the argument to the --data option in your script is ending with the first word of TODAY_DATE's value. The following word (10:06 in this case) is being parsed by curl as the first non-option argument an hence taken as the URL to connect to (I am not able to reproduce the exact error you show, though).

See also: Why does my shell script choke on whitespace or other special characters?