HTTP::Request::Common(3pm)     User Contributed Perl Documentation     HTTP::Request::Common(3pm)



NAME
       HTTP::Request::Common - Construct common HTTP::Request objects

SYNOPSIS
         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]);

DESCRIPTION
       This module provide 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.  The following functions are provided:

       GET $url
       GET $url, Header => Value,...
           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() and POST() functions described below.

           The get(...) method of "LWP::UserAgent" exists as a shortcut for $ua->request(GET
           ...).

       HEAD $url
       HEAD $url, Header => Value,...
           Like GET() but the method in the request is "HEAD".

           The head(...)  method of "LWP::UserAgent" exists as a shortcut for $ua->request(HEAD
           ...).

       PUT $url
       PUT $url, Header => Value,...
       PUT $url, Header => Value,..., Content => $content
           Like GET() but the method in the request is "PUT".

           The content of the request can be specified using the "Content" pseudo-header.  This
           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.

       DELETE $url
       DELETE $url, Header => Value,...
           Like GET() but the method in the request is "DELETE".  This function is not exported
           by default.

       POST $url
       POST $url, Header => Value,...
       POST $url, $form_ref, Header => Value,...
       POST $url, Header => Value,..., Content => $form_ref
       POST $url, Header => Value,..., Content => $content
           This works mostly like PUT() with "POST" as the method, but this function also takes a
           second optional array or hash reference parameter $form_ref.  As for PUT() the content
           can also be specified directly using the "Content" pseudo-header, and you may also
           provide the $form_ref this way.

           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 AT 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 AT 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 AT 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
           ...).

SEE ALSO
       HTTP::Request, LWP::UserAgent

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 1997-2004, Gisle Aas

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.



perl v5.14.2                                2012-09-30                 HTTP::Request::Common(3pm)