use pipe for curl data
Solution 1:
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
Solution 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