# REST API bulk contact search using request body

**URL:** <https://forum.mautic.org/t/rest-api-bulk-contact-search-using-request-body/24626>\
**Category:** Development\
**Created:** [June 30, 2022, 8:00am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/rest-api-bulk-contact-search-using-request-body/24626 "2022-06-30T08:00:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nunks](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/nunks/32/1648_2.png) [@nunks](https://forum.mautic.org/u/nunks)\
**Post date:** [June 30, 2022, 8:00am UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/rest-api-bulk-contact-search-using-request-body/24626/1 "2022-06-30T08:00:53Z")

</div>

Hi, I’m trying to call the Mautic 4.3 REST API using bash curl to find if a list of emails exist as contacts, but I seem to be hitting some kind of hard limit, because Mautic instantly returns an `HTTP 503: Service Unavailable`.

It works if I try with a handful of email addresses, but since my actual search list is very long I suspect this is due to the fact that I’m using a GET query string to send the search list, as exemplified in [Mautic Developer Documentation](https://developer.mautic.org/#list-contacts) :

```auto
curl -gkX GET \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -H "Authorization: Basic $(echo -n 'user:password' | base64)" \
     'https://mautic-url/api/contacts?where[0][col]=email&where[0][expr]=in&where[0][val]=user@email,otheruser@email,yetanotheruser@email...'

```

**So my question is:** is there a way to send a list of emails to search via REST API using the request body instead of the query string?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nunks](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/forum.mautic.org/nunks/32/1648_2.png) [@nunks](https://forum.mautic.org/u/nunks)\
**Post date:** [June 30, 2022, 8:09pm UTC](https://forum.mautic.org/t/rest-api-bulk-contact-search-using-request-body/24626/2 "2022-06-30T20:09:52Z")

</div>

Uh, I guess it was just a matter of sending the same query string inside the request body instead of using the URL. Sorry for the dumb question.