---
title: " Gerrit Code Review - REST API Developers' Notes"
sidebar: gerritdoc_sidebar
permalink: dev-rest-api.html
---
This document is about developing the REST API. For details of the
actual APIs available in Gerrit, please see the [REST API interface
reference](rest-api.html).

## Testing REST API Functionality

### Basic Testing

Basic testing of REST API functionality can be done with `curl`:

``` 
  curl http://localhost:8080/path/to/api/
```

By default, `curl` sends `GET` requests. To test APIs with `PUT`,
`POST`, or `DELETE`, an additional argument is required:

``` 
 curl -X PUT http://localhost:8080/path/to/api/
 curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/path/to/api/
 curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8080/path/to/api/
```

### Sending Data in the Request

Some REST APIs accept data in the request body of `PUT` and `POST`
requests.

Test data can be included from a local
file:

``` 
  curl -X PUT -d@testdata.txt --header "Content-Type: application/json" http://localhost:8080/path/to/api/
```

Note that the `-d` option will remove the newlines from the content of
the local file. If the content should be sent as-is then use the
`--data-binary` option
instead:

``` 
  curl -X PUT --data-binary @testdata.txt --header "Content-Type: text/plain" http://localhost:8080/path/to/api/
```

Example to set a Gerrit project’s
[description](rest-api-projects.html#set-project-description):

``` 
 curl -X PUT --user john:2LlAB3K9B0PF --data-binary @project-desc.txt --header "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" http://localhost:8080/a/projects/myproject/description
```

### Authentication

To test APIs that require authentication, the username and password must
be specified on the command line:

``` 
 curl --user username:password http://localhost:8080/a/path/to/api/
```

This makes it easy to switch users for testing of permissions.

It is also possible to test with a username and password from the
`.netrc` file (on Windows, `_netrc`):

``` 
 curl -n http://localhost:8080/a/path/to/api/
```

In both cases, the password should be the user’s [HTTP
password](user-upload.html#http).

### Verifying Header Content

To verify the headers returned from a REST API call, use `curl` in
verbose mode:

``` 
  curl -v -n -X DELETE http://localhost:8080/a/path/to/api/
```

The headers on both the request and the response will be printed.

## GERRIT

Part of [Gerrit Code Review](index.html)

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