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  => 'gisle@aas.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 => 'gisle@aas.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"

	     gisle@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 v5.12.1							    2009-06-15						  HTTP::Request::Common(3)