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.

       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 a HTML <form>
           POSTing like this:

             POST 'http://www.perl.org/survey.cgi',
                  [ name   => 'Gisle Aas',
                    email  => 'gisleATaas.no',
                    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 => 'gisleATaas.no',
                                    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"

             gisleATaas.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 v5.12.4                                               2009-06-15                                   HTTP::Request::Common(3)