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



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.

       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 a HTML <form> POSTing like this:

             POST 'http://www.perl.org/survey.cgi',
                  [ name   => 'Gisle Aas',
                    email  => '[email protected]',
                    gender => 'M',
                    born   => '1964',
                    perc   => '3%',
                  ];

           This will create a 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 => '[email protected]',
                                    gender => 'M',
                                    born   => '1964',
                                    init   => ["$ENV{HOME}/.profile"],
                                  ]

           This will create a 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"

             [email protected]
             --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 --6G+f-If

           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 v5.8.9                                      2008-04-14                         HTTP::Request::Common(3)