NAME
HTTP::Request - HTTP style request message
VERSION
version 7.00
SYNOPSIS
require
HTTP::Request;
and usually used like this:
$ua
= LWP::UserAgent->new;
$response
=
$ua
->request(
$request
);
DESCRIPTION
HTTP::Request
is a class encapsulating HTTP style requests, consisting of a request line, some headers, and a content body. Note that the LWP library uses HTTP style requests even for non-HTTP protocols. Instances of this class are usually passed to the request() method of an LWP::UserAgent
object.
HTTP::Request
is a subclass of HTTP::Message
and therefore inherits its methods. The following additional methods are available:
- $r = HTTP::Request->new( $method, $uri )
- $r = HTTP::Request->new( $method, $uri, $header )
- $r = HTTP::Request->new( $method, $uri, $header, $content )
-
Constructs a new
HTTP::Request
object describing a request on the object $uri using method $method. The $method argument must be a string. The $uri argument can be either a string, or a reference to aURI
object. The optional $header argument should be a reference to anHTTP::Headers
object or a plain array reference of key/value pairs. The optional $content argument should be a string of bytes. - $r = HTTP::Request->parse( $str )
-
This constructs a new request object by parsing the given string.
- $r->method
- $r->method( $val )
-
This is used to get/set the method attribute. The method should be a short string like "GET", "HEAD", "PUT", "PATCH" or "POST".
- $r->uri
- $r->uri( $val )
-
This is used to get/set the uri attribute. The $val can be a reference to a URI object or a plain string. If a string is given, then it should be parsable as an absolute URI.
- $r->header( $field )
- $r->header( $field => $value )
-
This is used to get/set header values and it is inherited from
HTTP::Headers
viaHTTP::Message
. See HTTP::Headers for details and other similar methods that can be used to access the headers. - $r->accept_decodable
-
This will set the
Accept-Encoding
header to the list of encodings that decoded_content() can decode. - $r->content
- $r->content( $bytes )
-
This is used to get/set the content and it is inherited from the
HTTP::Message
base class. See HTTP::Message for details and other methods that can be used to access the content.Note that the content should be a string of bytes. Strings in perl can contain characters outside the range of a byte. The
Encode
module can be used to turn such strings into a string of bytes. - $r->as_string
- $r->as_string( $eol )
-
Method returning a textual representation of the request.
EXAMPLES
Creating requests to be sent with LWP::UserAgent or others can be easy. Here are a few examples.
Simple POST
Here, we'll create a simple POST request that could be used to send JSON data to an endpoint.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use
strict;
use
warnings;
use
HTTP::Request ();
my
$header
= [
'Content-Type'
=>
'application/json; charset=UTF-8'
];
my
$data
= {
foo
=>
'bar'
,
baz
=>
'quux'
};
my
$encoded_data
= encode_json(
$data
);
my
$r
= HTTP::Request->new(
'POST'
,
$url
,
$header
,
$encoded_data
);
# at this point, we could send it via LWP::UserAgent
# my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
# my $res = $ua->request($r);
Batch POST Request
Some services, like Google, allow multiple requests to be sent in one batch. https://developers.google.com/drive/v3/web/batch for example. Using the add_part
method from HTTP::Message makes this simple.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use
strict;
use
warnings;
use
HTTP::Request ();
my
$auth_token
=
'auth_token'
;
my
$url_no_email
=
'https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/fileId/permissions?fields=id&sendNotificationEmail=false'
;
# generate a JSON post request for one of the batch entries
my
$req1
= build_json_request(
$url
, {
emailAddress
=>
'example@appsrocks.com'
,
role
=>
"writer"
,
type
=>
"user"
,
});
# generate a JSON post request for one of the batch entries
my
$req2
= build_json_request(
$url_no_email
, {
domain
=>
"appsrocks.com"
,
role
=>
"reader"
,
type
=>
"domain"
,
});
# generate a multipart request to send all of the other requests
my
$r
= HTTP::Request->new(
'POST'
,
$batch_url
, [
'Accept-Encoding'
=>
'gzip'
,
# if we don't provide a boundary here, HTTP::Message will generate
# one for us. We could use UUID::uuid() here if we wanted.
'Content-Type'
=>
'multipart/mixed; boundary=END_OF_PART'
]);
# add the two POST requests to the main request
$r
->add_part(
$req1
,
$req2
);
# at this point, we could send it via LWP::UserAgent
# my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new();
# my $res = $ua->request($r);
exit
();
sub
build_json_request {
my
(
$url
,
$href
) =
@_
;
my
$header
= [
'Authorization'
=>
"Bearer $auth_token"
,
'Content-Type'
=>
'application/json; charset=UTF-8'
];
return
HTTP::Request->new(
'POST'
,
$url
,
$header
, encode_json(
$href
));
}
SEE ALSO
HTTP::Headers, HTTP::Message, HTTP::Request::Common, HTTP::Response
AUTHOR
Gisle Aas <gisle@activestate.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 1994 by Gisle Aas.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.