HTTP::Request::Common - Construct common HTTP::Request objects
version 6.44
use HTTP::Request::Common; $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new; $ua->request(GET http://www.sn.no/); $ua->request(POST http://somewhere/foo, foo => bar, bar => foo); $ua->request(PATCH http://somewhere/foo, foo => bar, bar => foo); $ua->request(PUT http://somewhere/foo, foo => bar, bar => foo); $ua->request(OPTIONS http://somewhere/foo, foo => bar, bar => foo);
This module provides functions that return newly created
HTTP::Request objects. These functions are usually more
convenient to use than the standard HTTP::Request
constructor for the most common requests.
Note that LWP::UserAgent has several convenience methods, including
get, head, delete,
post and put.
The following functions are provided:
The GET function returns an HTTP::Request object
initialized with the GET method and the specified URL. It is roughly
equivalent to the following call HTTP::Request->new( GET => $url,
HTTP::Headers->new(Header => Value,...), ) but is less cluttered.
What is different is that a header named Content will
initialize the content part of the request instead of setting a header
field. Note that GET requests should normally not have a content, so
this hack makes more sense for the PUT, PATCH
and POST functions described below. The
get(...) method of LWP::UserAgent exists as a shortcut for
$ua->request(GET ...).
Like GET() but the method in the request is HEAD.
The head(...) method of LWP::UserAgent exists as a shortcut
for $ua->request(HEAD ...).
Like GET but the method in the request is
DELETE. This function is not exported by default.
The same as POST below, but the method in the request is
PATCH.
The same as POST below, but the method in the request is
PUT
The same as POST below, but the method in the request is
OPTIONS This was added in version 6.21, so you should
require that in your code: use HTTP::Request::Common 6.21;
POST, PATCH and PUT all work
with the same parameters. %data = ( title => something, body =>
something else ); $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new(); $request =
HTTP::Request::Common::POST( $url, [ %data ] ); $response =
$ua->request($request); They take a second optional array or hash
reference parameter $form_ref. The content can also be
specified directly using the Content pseudo-header, and you
may also provide the $form_ref this way. The
Content pseudo-header steals a bit of the header field
namespace as there is no way to directly specify a header that is
actually called Content. If you really need this you must update the
request returned in a separate statement. The $form_ref
argument can be used to pass key/value pairs for the form content. By
default we will initialize a request using the
application/x-www-form-urlencoded content type. This means
that you can emulate an HTML <form> POSTing like this: POST
http://www.perl.org/survey.cgi, [ name => Gisle Aas, email =>
gisle@aas.no, gender => M, born => 1964, perc => 3%, ]; This
will create an HTTP::Request object that looks like this: POST
http://www.perl.org/survey.cgi Content-Length: 66 Content-Type:
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
name=Gisle%20Aas&email=gisle%40aas.no&gender=M&born=1964&perc=3%25
Multivalued form fields can be specified by either repeating the field
name or by passing the value as an array reference. The POST method also
supports the multipart/form-data content used for
Form-based File Upload as specified in RFC 1867. You trigger
this content format by specifying a content type of
form-data as one of the request headers. If one of the
values in the $form_ref is an array reference, then it is
treated as a file part specification with the following interpretation:
[ $file, $filename, Header => Value... ] [ undef, $filename, Header
=> Value,..., Content => $content ] The first value in the array
($file) is the name of a file to open. This file will be read and its
content placed in the request. The routine will croak if the file can't
be opened. Use an undef as $file value if you
want to specify the content directly with a Content header.
The $filename is the filename to report in the request. If
this value is undefined, then the basename of the $file
will be used. You can specify an empty string as $filename
if you want to suppress sending the filename when you provide a
$file value. If a $file is provided by no
Content-Type header, then Content-Type and
Content-Encoding will be filled in automatically with the
values returned by LWP::MediaTypes::guess_media_type()
Sending my ~/.profile to the survey used as example above can
be achieved by this: POST http://www.perl.org/survey.cgi, Content_Type
=> form-data, Content => [ name => Gisle Aas, email =>
gisle@aas.no, gender => M, born => 1964, init =>
["$ENV{HOME}/.profile"], ] This will create an HTTP::Request object that
almost looks this (the boundary and the content of your
~/.profile is likely to be different): POST
http://www.perl.org/survey.cgi Content-Length: 388 Content-Type:
multipart/form-data; boundary="6G+f" --6G+f Content-Disposition:
form-data; name="name" Gisle Aas --6G+f Content-Disposition: form-data;
name="email" gisle@aas.no --6G+f Content-Disposition: form-data;
name="gender" M --6G+f Content-Disposition: form-data; name="born" 1964
--6G+f Content-Disposition: form-data; name="init"; filename=".profile"
Content-Type: text/plain PATH=/local/perl/bin:$PATH export PATH --6G+f--
If you set the $DYNAMIC_FILE_UPLOAD variable (exportable)
to some TRUE value, then you get back a request object with a subroutine
closure as the content attribute. This subroutine will read the content
of any files on demand and return it in suitable chunks. This allow you
to upload arbitrary big files without using lots of memory. You can even
upload infinite files like /dev/audio if you wish; however, if
the file is not a plain file, there will be no
Content-Length header defined for the request. Not all
servers (or server applications) like this. Also, if the file(s) change
in size between the time the Content-Length is calculated
and the time that the last chunk is delivered, the subroutine will
Croak. The post(...) method of LWP::UserAgent
exists as a shortcut for $ua->request(POST ...).
HTTP::Request, LWP::UserAgent
Also, there are some examples in EXAMPLES in HTTP::Request that you might find useful. For example, batch requests are explained there.
Gisle Aas <gisle@activestate.com>
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.