How to get the literal string "{\" foo3 \":\" bar3 \"}" from <|"foo3" -> "bar3"|> --- ( Was: Problem with Run["curl ..."] ... )

Question

UPDATE: 25-Jan-17 12:02AM CET

FirebaseLink package does not work on windows

UPDATE: 25-Jan-17 12:02AM CET

The problem could probably be reduced to: "How do I get the literal string

"{\" foo3 \":\" bar3 \"}"

from the association

<|"foo3" -> "bar3"|>

?"

This makes the problem testable, I suppose.

ORIGINAL QUESTION

I am working on a notebook where I have to execute external Windows10 commands ( i.e. write data to a Firebase database using curl ). In question How to call external commands with parameters on Win7? I found that I should use

Run[command].

At the DOS level I want to execute a string in this format:

curl -X PUT -d "{\"name\":{\"last\": \"sparrow\"}}" https://samplechat.firebaseio-demo.com/users/jack.json

( See also question: Firebase - How to write using curl? )

The string

"{\"name\":{\"last\": \"sparrow\"}}"

must be in JSON format recognizable by Firebase. In my application this data comes from a function which returns a list of associations.

ExportString[getBkmkCompEvntMrkt[], "JSON"]

So I have

curl -X PUT -d
ExportString[getBkmkCompEvntMrkt[], "JSON"], and
https:myfirebasedb/target.json

to work with.

Sofar I have consistently failed to get this working.

Please advise.

Answer 1

For your updated question this might work:

KeyValueMap[Colon, <|"foo3" -> "bar3"|>]
ToString[%, InputForm]
StringReplace[%, "\[Colon]" -> ":"]

{"foo3" \[Colon] "bar3"}

"{\"foo3\" \[Colon] \"bar3\"}"

"{\"foo3\" : \"bar3\"}"

Answer 2

The question arose from using the package FirebaseLink. It turned out that this package does not work on Windows(!). I solved the issue here: Patch for FirebaseLink if you want to use the package in a windows environment.

Windows requires Run for external programs and does not allow single quotes around the firebase URL.