How to use curl with Django, csrf tokens and POST requests

Question

I\'m using curl to test one of my Django forms. The calls I\'ve tried (with errors from each, and over multiple lines for readability):

(1):

curl
-d          


        

Answer 1

A mixture of Damien's response and your example number 2 worked for me. I used a simple login page to test, I expect that your registration view is similar. Damien's response almost works, but is missing the sessionid cookie.

I recommend a more robust approach. Rather than manually entering the cookies from other requests, try using curl's built in cookie management system to simulate a complete user interaction. That way, you reduce the chance of making an error:

$ curl -v -c cookies.txt -b cookies.txt host.com/registrations/register/
$ curl -v -c cookies.txt -b cookies.txt -d "email=user@site.com&a=1&csrfmiddlewaretoken=" host.com/registrations/register/

The first curl simulates the user first arriving at the page with a GET request, and all the necessary cookies are saved. The second curl simulates filling in the form fields and sending them as a POST. Note that you have to include the csrfmiddlewaretoken field in the POST data, as suggested by Damien.