For a RESTful HTTP POST containing XML: curl -X POST -d @filename http://example.com/path/to/resource --header "Content-Type:text/xml"

or for JSON, use this: curl -X POST -d @filename http://example.com/path/to/resource --header "Content-Type:application/json" This will read the contents of file named "filename" and send it as the post request.

Only get http code for URL (see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6136022/script-to-get-the-http-status-code-of-a-list-of-urls): curl -o /dev/null --silent --head --write-out '%{http_code}\n' <url>