Update category picture (via image upload) API not working

<baris>

This seems to work for me on windows.

$ curl -H "Authorization: Bearer ...." -XPOST -F cid=2 -F "files[]=@c:\ideas.png" http://127.0.0.1:4567/api/admin/category/uploadpicture
Forbidden

I got a forbidden error due to missing csrf token but the file was visible on the server logs.

{
  files: [
    {
      fieldName: 'files[]',
      originalFilename: 'ideas.png',
      path: 'C:\\Users\\Baris\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\BnugKrdsfzdSP4rlETtcLt9t.png',
      headers: [Object],
      size: 59289,
      name: 'ideas.png',
      type: 'image/png'
    }
  ]
}

Did you try using "files[]=@c:\ideas.png" ?

jpop71

@baris We did not try that way, we tried files[0]=

Now I'm getting 403 Forbidden, with invalid csrf token in the logs.

2021-10-22T23:54:52.993Z [4567/19620] - error: /api/admin/category/uploadpicture
invalid csrf token

How do I get around the invalid token?

jpop71

Here is the verbose output from my macbook:

Note: Unnecessary use of -X or --request, POST is already inferred.
*   Trying 192.168.10.65...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to pubdump.unfufadoo.net (192.168.10.65) port 4567 (#0)
> POST /api/admin/category/uploadpicture HTTP/1.1
> Host: pubdump.unfufadoo.net:4567
> User-Agent: curl/7.64.1
> Accept: */*
> Authorization: Bearer e3642513-175a-4650-ae39-622505ce32ba
> Content-Length: 7450
> Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------------------------23a77408539631fe
> Expect: 100-continue
>
< HTTP/1.1 100 Continue
* We are completely uploaded and fine
< HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
< X-DNS-Prefetch-Control: off
< Expect-CT: max-age=0
< X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
< X-Download-Options: noopen
< X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
< X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies: none
< X-XSS-Protection: 0
< Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin
< X-Powered-By: NodeBB
< Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self'
< Set-Cookie: _csrf=KEEYRk8-aMRzJbUywg3dSE5C; Path=/
< Set-Cookie: express.sid=s%3AAZCyzQs6kMVtHBfIxhfjHyTNarERnXAx.IXyYI8wP1w3cJjJkcreNjgGJTVJGP6UoI0FXRTJQZso; Path=/; Expires=Sat, 06 Nov 2021 00:09:16 GMT; HttpOnly; SameSite=Lax
< Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
< Content-Length: 9
< ETag: W/"9-PatfYBLj4Um1qTm5zrukoLhNyPU"
< Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2021 00:09:16 GMT
< Connection: keep-alive
< Keep-Alive: timeout=5
<
* Connection #0 to host pubdump.unfufadoo.net left intact
Forbidden* Closing connection 0

I see the message "We are completely uploaded and fine" in the above. But ultimately am getting the invalid token error over and over.

<baris>

I think you have to first load a regular route and get a csrf token and then use that in your POST call. I am not sure how to do that in curl. Our tests do it using request https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/blob/master/test/helpers/index.js#L14 and then storing the cookies then we use it to make POST requests.

<baris>

This worked for me give it a try

# get csrf token and save cookies
curl http://127.0.0.1:4567/api/config -c cookies.txt -s | grep csrf

#this will print something like
"csrf_token": "bHqyDEde-Y_zLYuitkD4uc5Cd7-0mYF1m5GU",

Copy the value of the csrf_token and make the upload also use cookies.txt with -b cookies.txt

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer da21bf5f-6924-4e5d-9a82-92191e6f2240" -XPOST \
  -F params="{\"cid\":\"2\"}" \
  -F "files[]=@c:\ideas.png" \
  -F "_csrf=bHqyDEde-Y_zLYuitkD4uc5Cd7-0mYF1m5GU"  \
  -b cookies.txt \
  http://127.0.0.1:4567/api/admin/category/uploadpicture

Should get this output

[
    {
        "name": "ideas.png",
        "url": "/assets/uploads/category/category-2.png"
    }
]

jpop71

@baris we are definitely close. That process works, I do get the success output, but the image doesn't appear as the category image. It just stays the default background color.

<baris>

That could be due to cache, did you try clearing the object cache at /admin/advanced/cache?

jpop71

@baris thanks, just tried that and it didn't work. Is there a 3rd step to actually placing the image?

<baris>

Ahh yes you need to set the backgroundImage property of category:2 to the value of "url": "/assets/uploads/category/category-2.png"

jpop71

@baris Thank-you, found it, it is a PUT on the write API. First go, I got the syntax mostly correct, I got a 200 OK message, but the Response:backgroundImage key was empty.

I will poke at this more after dinner, but I think we can call this one solved, since it is just a matter of figuring out the right syntax at this point.

jpop71

@baris Using the below site, reminding me of just how powerful Chrome Developers tools are, I was able to Copy As Curl the specific PUT command.

Curl Convert

Then using the same command and just changing the CID, I confirmed the same command works for all of them.

This is what ended up working, it includes all the recorded headers, of which some will be removed as not necessary:

curl 'http://pubdump.unfufadoo.net:4567/api/v3/categories/80' \
  -X 'PUT' \
  -H 'Connection: keep-alive' \
  -H 'Accept: */*' \
  -H 'DNT: 1' \
  -H 'x-csrf-token: H5FMJEaY-CthHWM_2Unzf7DtoPeryGq_JejE' \
  -H 'X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest' \
  -H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/94.0.4606.81 Safari/537.36' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8' \
  -H 'Origin: http://pubdump.unfufadoo.net:4567' \
  -H 'Referer: http://pubdump.unfufadoo.net:4567/admin/manage/categories/80' \
  -H 'Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9,zh;q=0.8,zh-CN;q=0.7,zh-TW;q=0.6,ja;q=0.5,ko;q=0.4,th;q=0.3' \
  -H 'Cookie: _csrf=27ygKMdG0c0EyiVsJKAkKpId; express.sid=s%3AdODaXfUpLz7NTFsijWLq0d2rPUhH1Ki4.qkyxWOaxlBy%2BLDRpTYbhWS9QkD9IJE%2FRTN1vIhp7yV4' \
  -H 'sec-gpc: 1' \
  --data '{"backgroundImage":"/assets/uploads/category/category-84.jpg"}' \
  --compressed \
  --insecure

Then using the cURL convert site, was able to save as javascript and modify to our needs so that we could loop through all categories.

Jeff