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Execute a GraphQL query with curl

Using a plain curl to send a query provides the ability to slice-n-dice with the results and apply post-processing if needed. For example, converting results received from GraphQL API into a CSV format.

For more functionality, like auto-completion, schema exploring, etc., you can look at GraphQL clients.

GraphQL API expects JSON with two essentials fields: “query” and “variables”.

A query should be stripped from newline symbols and sent as a single-line string when the variables is an object full of values for all placeholders used in the query:

A payload structure for GraphQL API
{
"query": "{viewer { ... }}",
"variables": {}
}

It is still possible to use a human-friendly query though. In the example below you can see how echo piped together with tr to provide a proper payload with curl:

Example bash script that uses curl to query Analytics API
echo '{ "query":
"{
viewer {
zones(filter: { zoneTag: $zoneTag }) {
firewallEventsAdaptive(
filter: $filter
limit: 10
orderBy: [datetime_DESC]
) {
action
clientAsn
clientCountryName
clientIP
clientRequestPath
clientRequestQuery
datetime
source
userAgent
}
}
}
}",
"variables": {
"zoneTag": "<zone-tag>",
"filter": {
"datetime_geq": "2022-07-24T11:00:00Z",
"datetime_leq": "2022-07-24T12:00:00Z"
}
}
}' | tr -d '\n' | curl --silent \
https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/graphql \
--header "Authorization: Bearer <API_TOKEN>" \
--header "Content-Type: application/json" \
--data @-