NAME

HTTP::Request - HTTP style request message

VERSION

version 6.44

SYNOPSIS

require HTTP::Request; $request = HTTP::Request->new(GET => http://www.example.com/);

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 a URI object. The optional $header argument should be a reference to an HTTP::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 via HTTP::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 (); use JSON::MaybeXS qw(encode_json); my $url = https://www.example.com/api/user/123; 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 (); use JSON::MaybeXS qw(encode_json); my $auth_token = auth_token; my $batch_url = https://www.googleapis.com/batch; my $url = https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3/files/fileId/permissions?fields=id; 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 dont 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.