NAME

HTTP::Request - HTTP style request message

VERSION

version 6.41

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 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.