HTTP::Message(3)					User Contributed Perl Documentation					  HTTP::Message(3)

NAME

       HTTP::Message - Class encapsulating HTTP messages

SYNOPSIS

	package HTTP::Request;	# or HTTP::Response
	require HTTP::Message;
	@ISA=qw(HTTP::Message);

DESCRIPTION

       An "HTTP::Message" object contains some headers and a content (body).  The class is abstract, i.e. it only used as a base class for
       "HTTP::Request" and "HTTP::Response" and should never instantiated as itself.

       The following methods are available:

       $mess = HTTP::Message->new
	   This is the object constructor.  It should only be called internally by this library.  External code should construct "HTTP::Request"
	   or "HTTP::Response" objects.

       $mess->clone()
	   Returns a copy of the object.

       $mess->protocol([$proto])
	   Sets the HTTP protocol used for the message.  The protocol() is a string like "HTTP/1.0" or "HTTP/1.1".

       $mess->content([$content])
	   The content() method sets the content if an argument is given.  If no argument is given the content is not touched.	In either case the
	   previous content is returned.

       $mess->add_content($data)
	   The add_content() methods appends more data to the end of the current content buffer.

       $mess->content_ref
	   The content_ref() method will return a reference to content buffer string.  It can be more efficient to access the content this way if
	   the content is huge, and it can even be used for direct manipulation of the content, for instance:

	     ${$res->content_ref} =~ s/foo/bar/g;

       $mess->headers;
	   Return the embedded HTTP::Headers object.

       $mess->headers_as_string([$endl])
	   Call the as_string() method for the headers in the message.	This will be the same as:

	    $mess->headers->as_string

	   but it will make your program a whole character shorter :-)

       All unknown "HTTP::Message" methods are delegated to the "HTTP::Headers" object that is part of every message.  This allows convenient
       access to these methods.  Refer to HTTP::Headers for details of these methods:

	 $mess->header($field => $val);
	 $mess->push_header($field => $val);
	 $mess->init_header($field => $val);
	 $mess->remove_header($field);
	 $mess->scan(&doit);

	 $mess->date;
	 $mess->expires;
	 $mess->if_modified_since;
	 $mess->if_unmodified_since;
	 $mess->last_modified;
	 $mess->content_type;
	 $mess->content_encoding;
	 $mess->content_length;
	 $mess->content_language
	 $mess->title;
	 $mess->user_agent;
	 $mess->server;
	 $mess->from;
	 $mess->referer;
	 $mess->www_authenticate;
	 $mess->authorization;
	 $mess->proxy_authorization;
	 $mess->authorization_basic;
	 $mess->proxy_authorization_basic;

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 1995-2001 Gisle Aas.

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

libwww-perl-5.65						    2001-11-15							  HTTP::Message(3)