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 @-