Net::HTTP - Low-level HTTP client connection

- NAME
- NOTE
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- SUBCLASSING
- SEE ALSO
- COPYRIGHT

# NAME

Net::HTTP - Low-level HTTP client connection

# NOTE

This module is experimental. Details of its interface is likely to change in the future.

# SYNOPSIS

     use Net::HTTP;
     my $s = Net::HTTP->new(Host => "www.perl.com) || die $@;
     $s->write_request(GET => "/", 'User-Agent' => "Mozilla/5.0");
     my($code, $mess, %h) = $s->read_response_headers;

     while (1) {
        my $buf;
        my $n = $s->read_entity_body($buf, 1024);
        last unless $n;
        print $buf;
     }

# DESCRIPTION

The `Net::HTTP` class is a low-level HTTP client. An instance of the `Net::HTTP` class represents a connection to an HTTP server. The HTTP protocol is described in RFC 2616.

`Net::HTTP` is a sub-class of `IO::Socket::INET`. You can mix the methods described below with reading and writing from the socket directly. This is not necessary a good idea, unless you know what you are doing.

The following methods are provided (in addition to those of `IO::Socket::INET`):

$s = Net::HTTP->new( %options )
  The `Net::HTTP` constructor takes the same options as `IO::Socket::INET` as well as these:

        Host:            Initial host attribute value
        KeepAlive:       Initial keep_alive attribute value
        SendTE:          Initial send_te attribute_value
        HTTPVersion:     Initial http_version attribute value
        PeerHTTPVersion: Initial peer_http_version attribute value
        MaxLineLength:   Initial max_line_length attribute value
        MaxHeaderLines:  Initial max_header_lines attribute value

$s->host
  Get/set the default value of the `Host` header to send. The $host should not be set to an empty string (or `undef`).

$s->keep_alive
  Get/set the keep-alive value. If this value is TRUE then the request will be sent with headers indicating that the server should try to keep the connection open so that multiple requests can be sent.

  The actual headers set will depend on the value of the `http_version` and `peer_http_version` attributes.

$s->send_te
  Get/set the a value indicating if the request will be sent with a ``TE'' header to indicate the transfer encodings that the server can chose to use. If the `Compress::Zlib` module is installed then this will annouce that this client accept both the deflate and gzip encodings.

$s->http_version
  Get/set the HTTP version number that this client should announce. This value can only be set to ``1.0'' or ``1.1''. The default is ``1.1''.

$s->peer_http_version
  Get/set the protocol version number of our peer. This value will initially be ``1.0'', but will be updated by a successful `read_response_headers()` method call.

$s->max_line_length
  Get/set a limit on the length of response line and response header lines. The default is 4096. A value of 0 means no limit.

$s->max_header_length
  Get/set a limit on the number of headers lines that a response can have. The default is 128. A value of 0 means no limit.

$s->format_request($method, $uri, %headers, [$content])
  Format a request message and return it as a string. If the headers do not include a `Host` header, then a header is inserted with the value of the `host` attribute. Headers like `Connection` and `Keep-Alive` might also be added depending on the status of the `keep_alive` attribute.

  If $content is given (and it is non-empty), then a `Content-Length` header is automatically added unless it was already present.

$s->write_request($method, $uri, %headers, [$content])
  Format and send a request message. Arguments are the same as for format_request(). Returns true if successful.

$s->`write_chunk($data)`
  Will write a new chunk of request entity body data. This method should only be used if the `Transfer-Encoding` header with a value of `chunked` was sent in the request. Note, writing zero-length data is a no-op. Use the `write_chunk_eof()` method to signal end of entity body data.

  Returns true if successful.

$s->`format_chunk($data)`
  Returns the string to be written for the given chunk of data.

$s->`write_chunk_eof(%trailers)`
  Will write eof marker for chunked data and optional trailers. Note that trailers should not really be used unless is was signaled with a `Trailer` header.

  Returns true if successful.

$s->`format_chunk_eof(%trailers)`
  Returns the string to be written for signaling EOF.

($code, $mess, %headers) = $s->read_response_headers( %opts )
  Read response headers from server. The $code is the 3 digit HTTP status code (see the HTTP::Status manpage) and $mess is the textual message that came with it. Headers are then returned as key/value pairs. Since key letter casing is not normalized and the same key can occur multiple times, assigning these values directly to a hash might be risky.

  As a side effect this method updates the 'peer_http_version' attribute.

  The method will raise exceptions (die) if the server does not speak proper HTTP.

  Options might be passed in as key/value pairs. There are currently only two options supported; `laxed` and `junk_out`.

  The `laxed` option will make `read_response_headers` more forgiving towards servers that have not learned how to speak HTTP properly. The <laxed> option is a boolean flag, and is enabled by passing in a TRUE value. The `junk_out` option can be used to capture bad header lines when `laxed` is enabled. The value should be an array reference. Bad header lines will be pushed onto the array.

$n = $s->read_entity_body($buf, $size);
  Reads chunks of the entity body content. Basically the same interface as for `read()` and sysread(), but buffer offset is not supported yet. This method should only be called after a successful `read_response_headers()` call.

  The return value will be `undef` on errors, 0 on EOF, -1 if no data could be returned this time, and otherwise the number of bytes added to $buf.

  This method might raise exceptions (die) if the server does not speak proper HTTP.

%headers = $s->get_trailers
  After `read_entity_body()` has returned 0 to indicate end of the entity body, you might call this method to pick up any trailers.

$s->_rbuf
  Get/set the read buffer content. The `read_response_headers()` and `read_entity_body()` methods use an internal buffer which they will look for data before they actually sysread more from the socket itself. If they read too much, the remaining data will be left in this buffer.

$s->_rbuf_length
  Returns the number of bytes in the read buffer.

# SUBCLASSING

The `read_response_headers()` and `read_entity_body()` will invoke the `sysread()` method when they need more data. Subclasses might want to override this method to contol how reading takes place.

The object itself is a glob. Subclasses should avoid using hash key names prefixed with `http_` and `io_`.

# SEE ALSO

the LWP manpage, the IO::Socket::INET manpage, the Net::HTTP::NB manpage

# COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2001 Gisle Aas.

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

Net::HTTP - Low-level HTTP client connection