use pipe for curl data

Question

I\'m trying to pass the cat output to curl:

$ cat file | curl --data \'{\"title\":\"mytitle\",\"input\":\"-\"}\' http://api

Bu

Answer 1

# Create the input file
echo -n 'Try                                                                     

                                                        
            

Answer 2

You can use the magical stdin file /dev/stdin

cat data.json | curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d "$(</dev/stdin)" http://api

Answer 3

If you want to type/paste the data without escaping or polluting your bash history then, you can use this

cat | curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://api -d @-

Which drops you into cat where you can input the data, directly, e.g. Shift + Insert in your terminal. You finish with a newline and a Ctrl + D which signals to cat that you're done. That data is then passed to curl, and you have a reusable history entry.

Answer 4

Try

curl --data '{"title":"mytitle","input":"'$(cat file)'-"}' http://api

Answer 5

I spent a while trying to figure this out and got it working with the following:

cat data.json | curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST --data-binary @- http://api

Answer 6

Sounds like you want to wrap the content of input in a JSON body, and then have that sent over with a POST request. I think that the simplest way to do that is to manipulate stdin first and then push that over to curl using -d @-. One way could look like this:

cat <(echo '{"title":"mytitle","input":"') file <(echo '"}') \
| curl -d @- http://api

I'm using <(echo) to use cat to merge strings and files, but there is almost certainly a better way.

Keep in mind that this does not escape the contents of file and that you may run into issues because of that.