cURL to PowerShell - Value in Square Bracket - powershell

Question

I've been struggling with another cURL to PowerShell conversion, specifically with a value in a square bracket.
Background: I am about 1,500 lines into a script that takes CSV import files, consumes it, validates it then converts it into a series of API calls, to automate a process which is done manually. I am doing this as a learning opportunity for myself, as I have never done API work before.
I have this cURL command (from Postman):
curl -X PATCH \
https://example.com \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer 1234567890' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
"data": {
"CID": 1234,
"GroupId": [
31
]
}
}'
My struggle is with the square brackets round the "GroupId".
To convert it to PowerShell, I have done the following:
$URL = "https://example.com"
$Body = #{
'data' = #{
'CID' = $CustomerID;
'GroupId' = $GetGroupID2
}
}
$CurlArgument = '-X', 'PATCH',
'-H', 'Content-Type: application/json',
$URL1,
'-H',
$AuthBearer,
'--retry', '2',
'--retry-delay', '3',
'--retry-connrefused',
'-d',
(($Body | ConvertTo-Json) -replace '"', '\"')
Write-Host "$Section cURL command took" ("{0:n1}" -f (Measure-Command {$PatchGroupResponse = & $CURLEXE #CurlArgument}).TotalSeconds) "Seconds" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Now, PowerShell "hates" the square brackets enclosing "GroupID", so I did the following (Let say $GetGroupID contains 31 (with no quotes. I get this earlier in my script and save it to the variable):
$GetGroupID2 = '['+$GetGroupID+']'
$GetGroupID2 now contains: [31], however when I ConvertTo-Json, I get the extra quotes round my $GetGroupID2, [31] becomes "[31]", I assume from the -replace command but I don't know why/how or how to stop it.
My #CurlArgument looks like this:
-X
PATCH
-H
Content-Type: application/json
https://example.com
-H
Authorization: Bearer 1234567890
--retry
2
--retry-delay
3
--retry-connrefused
-d
{
\"data\": {
\"CID\": 1234,
\"GroupId\": \"[31]\"
}
My call to the server is failing with:
{"Missing Argument, Argument Name = CID"}.
From what I can see, everything looks the same as my cURL command, except the extra quotes round my GroupID of "[31]" (should be [31]).
Can anyone give me any pointers as to why the extra quotes appear round the [31]?

Answer 1

By doing this: $GetGroupID2 = '['+$GetGroupID+']' you are creating a string [31] and therefore the value gets quoted by the ConvertTo-Json cmdlet.
In fact, it should be output as the single element of an array, so if you do this instead:
'GroupId' = #($GetGroupID2)
you are forcing the GroupId value to be an array, so the output will be like this:
"data": {
"CID": 1234,
"GroupId": [
31
]
}