Try this basic curl example that is supposed to perform REST search using SQL.

It seems that in this case JIRA assumes that project is a custom field and not a project, that's really weird. It does not matter what value you put for the project filter, you will get the same error, even if the project exists or not.

This reproduces with latest JIRA: 6.1.5 and 5.2.11 too.

Don't forget to specify credentials inside ~/.netrc file.

curl -N  -X POST --data '{ "jql": "project = XXX", "startAt": 0, "maxResults": 9999, "fields": [ "summary", "status", "assignee" ]}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" "https://locahost/rest/api/2/search"

{"errorMessages":["The value 'XXX' does not exist for the field 'project'."],"errors":{}}++ exit