curl and bash script, doing a post request with a bearer token - bash

Question

Please educate me!
My script is:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
username="zDISABLEDc"
rand="Z01c20a936f474b"
single_quote="'"
curl_string_part1_="-X PUT https://api.secretkgbwebsite.com/api/v4.1/user/$username "
curl_string_part2_='-H "Authorization: bearer 00000000-4cd9-4bc6-90da-5d43a155f30e" -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Postman-Token: 351e4bf1-04a2-4c99-8a21-21a05f51244a" -d '
curl_string_part3_='{"password": "'
curl_string_part4_='"}'
curl_string_complete="$curl_string_part1_$curl_string_part2_$single_quote$curl_string_part3_$rand$curl_string_part4_$single_quote"
echo $curl_string_complete
echo " "
success=0
curl $curl_string_complete && success=1
if ((success)); then
echo "SUCCESS. password has been reset to : "
echo $rand
else
echo "problem sending and resetting password."
fi
The errors I get are:
{"error":"unauthorized","error_description":"An Authentication object was not found in the SecurityContext"}curl: (6) Could not resolve host: bearer
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: 00000000-4cd9-4bc6-90da-5d43a155f30e"
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: no-cache"
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: application
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: 351e4bf1-04a2-4c99-8a21-21a05f51244a"
curl: (3) [globbing] unmatched close brace/bracket in column 18
Now the annoying thing is that if I run the line that my program echoes out (this line: echo $curl_string_complete) with curl, curl is happy and runs the line without a problem.

Answer 1

you have issue with shell expansion process, see bash manual and posix shell manuals for more details. the syntactical quotes are processed before variable expansion so the quote inside variables are literal. In the case of echo the variables are split but because echo joins by space this couldn't be seen.
change echo $curl_string_complete by printf "<%s>\n" $curl_string_complete to see how arguments are split.
to solve the issue you may use arrays, something like :
curl_string_part1_=( -X PUT https://api.secretkgbwebsite.com/api/v4.1/user/$username )
curl_string_part2_=(-H "Authorization: bearer 00000000-4cd9-4bc6-90da-5d43a155f30e" -H "Cache-Control: no-cache" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Postman-Token: 351e4bf1-04a2-4c99-8a21-21a05f51244a" -d )
curl_string_part3_='{"password": "'
curl_string_part4_='"}'
curl_string_complete=( "${curl_string_part1_[#]}" "${curl_string_part2_[#]}" "$curl_string_part3_$rand$curl_string_part4_" )
curl "${curl_string_complete[#]}"