HTTP::Request - HTTP style request message

1. VERSION
2. SYNOPSIS
3. DESCRIPTION
4. EXAMPLES
   1. Simple POST
   2. Batch POST Request
5. SEE ALSO
6. AUTHOR
7. COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

VERSION

version 6.14

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 Encode qw(encode_utf8);
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 $encoded_data = encode_utf8(encode_json($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 Encode qw(encode_utf8);
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 => '[email protected]',
    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, $header, encode_utf8(encode_json($href)));
}

SEE ALSO

HTTP::Headers, HTTP::Message, HTTP::Request::Common, HTTP::Response

AUTHOR

Gisle Aas <[email protected]>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 1994-2017 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.