Budibase/budibase · error · Error

Failed to load CURL document

Error message

Failed to load CURL document

What it means

Curl.tryLoad attempts to parse the pasted data as a curl command (extracting the URL, method, headers, body). If parsing fails, load throws 'Failed to load CURL document', meaning the input is not a recognizable curl invocation.

Source

Thrown at packages/server/src/api/controllers/query/import/sources/curl.ts:65

/**
 * Curl
 * https://curl.se/docs/manpage.html
 */
export class Curl extends ImportSource {
  curl: any

  tryLoad = async (data: string): Promise<boolean> => {
    try {
      this.curl = parseCurl(data)
    } catch (err) {
      return false
    }
    return true
  }

  load = async (data: string): Promise<void> => {
    if (!(await this.tryLoad(data))) {
      throw new Error("Failed to load CURL document")
    }
  }

  getUrl = (): URL => {
    return new URL(this.curl.raw_url)
  }

  getInfo = (): ImportInfo => {
    const url = this.getUrl()
    const method = this.curl.method
    const path = url.pathname
    return {
      name: url.hostname,
      url: url.origin,
      securityHeaders: this.getSecurityHeaders(),
      endpoints: [
        {
          id: this.buildEndpointId(method, path),

View on GitHub (pinned to a81a902e9a)

Solutions

1. Paste a genuine curl command starting with 'curl', e.g. curl -X GET 'https://api.example.com/items' -H 'Authorization: Bearer x'
2. Re-copy the command using devtools 'Copy as cURL (bash)' and avoid smart quotes/line continuations that break parsing
3. Simplify the command to its essential flags (method, URL, headers, -d body) if exotic flags are used
4. If the input is actually an OpenAPI spec, import it with the openapi type instead

Example fix

// before
const data = "https://api.example.com/items" // not a curl command
await RestImporter.init(data)
// after
const data = "curl -X GET 'https://api.example.com/items'"
await RestImporter.init(data)

const looksLikeCurl = (data: string) =>
  /^\s*curl\b/.test(data.trim()) && /https?:\/\//.test(data)
if (!looksLikeCurl(data) && !looksLikeOpenApi(data)) {
  throw new Error("Input must be a curl command or an OpenAPI document")
}

null

try {
  await RestImporter.init(data)
} catch (e) {
  if (String(e?.message).includes("Failed to load CURL document")) {
    // ask user to paste a proper curl command (Copy as cURL)
  }
  throw e
}

When it happens

Trigger: Auto-detected import (no type) falling through to the Curl source with data that is a raw URL, an HTTP request snippet, or a curl command using flags the parser does not understand (e.g. --data-urlencode, multi-line with unusual quoting, Windows caret continuations).

Common situations: Users paste a URL alone expecting it to import; pasted curl copied from browser devtools with 'Copy as fetch' instead of 'Copy as cURL'; PowerShell's Invoke-WebRequest or wget syntax pasted as if it were curl; curly quotes from a rich-text editor breaking tokenization.

Related errors

• Unable to determine delimiter
• Unsupported import data
• Unsupported method: ${method}
• Invalid filter ${type}: ${token}
• Failed to parse response body: ${err}

AI-assisted analysis of Budibase/budibase@a81a902e9a (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/91519a649fa35bc0. Report an issue: GitHub.