4 use vars qw($VERSION @ISA $SOCKET_CLASS);
7 unless ($SOCKET_CLASS) {
8 eval { require IO::Socket::INET } || require IO::Socket;
9 $SOCKET_CLASS = "IO::Socket::INET";
11 require Net::HTTP::Methods;
14 @ISA = ($SOCKET_CLASS, 'Net::HTTP::Methods');
18 Carp::croak("No Host option provided") unless @_;
19 $class->SUPER::new(@_);
24 $self->http_configure($cnf);
29 $self->SUPER::configure($cnf);
38 Net::HTTP - Low-level HTTP connection (client)
43 my $s = Net::HTTP->new(Host => "www.perl.com") || die $@;
44 $s->write_request(GET => "/", 'User-Agent' => "Mozilla/5.0");
45 my($code, $mess, %h) = $s->read_response_headers;
49 my $n = $s->read_entity_body($buf, 1024);
50 die "read failed: $!" unless defined $n;
57 The C<Net::HTTP> class is a low-level HTTP client. An instance of the
58 C<Net::HTTP> class represents a connection to an HTTP server. The
59 HTTP protocol is described in RFC 2616. The C<Net::HTTP> class
60 supports C<HTTP/1.0> and C<HTTP/1.1>.
62 C<Net::HTTP> is a sub-class of C<IO::Socket::INET>. You can mix the
63 methods described below with reading and writing from the socket
64 directly. This is not necessary a good idea, unless you know what you
67 The following methods are provided (in addition to those of
72 =item $s = Net::HTTP->new( %options )
74 The C<Net::HTTP> constructor method takes the same options as
75 C<IO::Socket::INET>'s as well as these:
77 Host: Initial host attribute value
78 KeepAlive: Initial keep_alive attribute value
79 SendTE: Initial send_te attribute_value
80 HTTPVersion: Initial http_version attribute value
81 PeerHTTPVersion: Initial peer_http_version attribute value
82 MaxLineLength: Initial max_line_length attribute value
83 MaxHeaderLines: Initial max_header_lines attribute value
85 The C<Host> option is also the default for C<IO::Socket::INET>'s
86 C<PeerAddr>. The C<PeerPort> defaults to 80 if not provided.
88 The C<Listen> option provided by C<IO::Socket::INET>'s constructor
89 method is not allowed.
91 If unable to connect to the given HTTP server then the constructor
92 returns C<undef> and $@ contains the reason. After a successful
93 connect, a C<Net:HTTP> object is returned.
97 Get/set the default value of the C<Host> header to send. The $host
98 must not be set to an empty string (or C<undef>) for HTTP/1.1.
102 Get/set the I<keep-alive> value. If this value is TRUE then the
103 request will be sent with headers indicating that the server should try
104 to keep the connection open so that multiple requests can be sent.
106 The actual headers set will depend on the value of the C<http_version>
107 and C<peer_http_version> attributes.
111 Get/set the a value indicating if the request will be sent with a "TE"
112 header to indicate the transfer encodings that the server can choose to
113 use. The list of encodings announced as accepted by this client depends
114 on availability of the following modules: C<Compress::Raw::Zlib> for
115 I<deflate>, and C<IO::Compress::Gunzip> for I<gzip>.
117 =item $s->http_version
119 Get/set the HTTP version number that this client should announce.
120 This value can only be set to "1.0" or "1.1". The default is "1.1".
122 =item $s->peer_http_version
124 Get/set the protocol version number of our peer. This value will
125 initially be "1.0", but will be updated by a successful
126 read_response_headers() method call.
128 =item $s->max_line_length
130 Get/set a limit on the length of response line and response header
131 lines. The default is 8192. A value of 0 means no limit.
133 =item $s->max_header_length
135 Get/set a limit on the number of header lines that a response can
136 have. The default is 128. A value of 0 means no limit.
138 =item $s->format_request($method, $uri, %headers, [$content])
140 Format a request message and return it as a string. If the headers do
141 not include a C<Host> header, then a header is inserted with the value
142 of the C<host> attribute. Headers like C<Connection> and
143 C<Keep-Alive> might also be added depending on the status of the
144 C<keep_alive> attribute.
146 If $content is given (and it is non-empty), then a C<Content-Length>
147 header is automatically added unless it was already present.
149 =item $s->write_request($method, $uri, %headers, [$content])
151 Format and send a request message. Arguments are the same as for
152 format_request(). Returns true if successful.
154 =item $s->format_chunk( $data )
156 Returns the string to be written for the given chunk of data.
158 =item $s->write_chunk($data)
160 Will write a new chunk of request entity body data. This method
161 should only be used if the C<Transfer-Encoding> header with a value of
162 C<chunked> was sent in the request. Note, writing zero-length data is
163 a no-op. Use the write_chunk_eof() method to signal end of entity
166 Returns true if successful.
168 =item $s->format_chunk_eof( %trailers )
170 Returns the string to be written for signaling EOF when a
171 C<Transfer-Encoding> of C<chunked> is used.
173 =item $s->write_chunk_eof( %trailers )
175 Will write eof marker for chunked data and optional trailers. Note
176 that trailers should not really be used unless is was signaled
177 with a C<Trailer> header.
179 Returns true if successful.
181 =item ($code, $mess, %headers) = $s->read_response_headers( %opts )
183 Read response headers from server and return it. The $code is the 3
184 digit HTTP status code (see L<HTTP::Status>) and $mess is the textual
185 message that came with it. Headers are then returned as key/value
186 pairs. Since key letter casing is not normalized and the same key can
187 even occur multiple times, assigning these values directly to a hash
188 is not wise. Only the $code is returned if this method is called in
191 As a side effect this method updates the 'peer_http_version'
194 Options might be passed in as key/value pairs. There are currently
195 only two options supported; C<laxed> and C<junk_out>.
197 The C<laxed> option will make read_response_headers() more forgiving
198 towards servers that have not learned how to speak HTTP properly. The
199 C<laxed> option is a boolean flag, and is enabled by passing in a TRUE
200 value. The C<junk_out> option can be used to capture bad header lines
201 when C<laxed> is enabled. The value should be an array reference.
202 Bad header lines will be pushed onto the array.
204 The C<laxed> option must be specified in order to communicate with
205 pre-HTTP/1.0 servers that don't describe the response outcome or the
206 data they send back with a header block. For these servers
207 peer_http_version is set to "0.9" and this method returns (200,
210 The method will raise an exception (die) if the server does not speak
211 proper HTTP or if the C<max_line_length> or C<max_header_length>
212 limits are reached. If the C<laxed> option is turned on and
213 C<max_line_length> and C<max_header_length> checks are turned off,
214 then no exception will be raised and this method will always
215 return a response code.
217 =item $n = $s->read_entity_body($buf, $size);
219 Reads chunks of the entity body content. Basically the same interface
220 as for read() and sysread(), but the buffer offset argument is not
221 supported yet. This method should only be called after a successful
222 read_response_headers() call.
224 The return value will be C<undef> on read errors, 0 on EOF, -1 if no data
225 could be returned this time, otherwise the number of bytes assigned
226 to $buf. The $buf is set to "" when the return value is -1.
228 You normally want to retry this call if this function returns either
229 -1 or C<undef> with C<$!> as EINTR or EAGAIN (see L<Errno>). EINTR
230 can happen if the application catches signals and EAGAIN can happen if
231 you made the socket non-blocking.
233 This method will raise exceptions (die) if the server does not speak
234 proper HTTP. This can only happen when reading chunked data.
236 =item %headers = $s->get_trailers
238 After read_entity_body() has returned 0 to indicate end of the entity
239 body, you might call this method to pick up any trailers.
243 Get/set the read buffer content. The read_response_headers() and
244 read_entity_body() methods use an internal buffer which they will look
245 for data before they actually sysread more from the socket itself. If
246 they read too much, the remaining data will be left in this buffer.
248 =item $s->_rbuf_length
250 Returns the number of bytes in the read buffer. This should always be
255 but might be more efficient.
261 The read_response_headers() and read_entity_body() will invoke the
262 sysread() method when they need more data. Subclasses might want to
263 override this method to control how reading takes place.
265 The object itself is a glob. Subclasses should avoid using hash key
266 names prefixed with C<http_> and C<io_>.
270 L<LWP>, L<IO::Socket::INET>, L<Net::HTTP::NB>
274 Copyright 2001-2003 Gisle Aas.
276 This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
277 modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.