HTTP::Tiny(3)

NAME
HTTP::Tiny - A small, simple, correct HTTP/1.1 client

VERSION
version 0.017

SYNOPSIS
    use HTTP::Tiny;

    my $response = HTTP::Tiny->new->get('http://example.com/');

    die "Failed!\n" unless $response->{success};

    print "$response->{status} $response->{reason}\n";

    while (my ($k, $v) = each %{$response->{headers}}) {
        for (ref $v eq 'ARRAY' ? @$v : $v) {
            print "$k: $_\n";
        }
    }

    print $response->{content} if length $response->{content};

DESCRIPTION
This is a very simple HTTP/1.1 client, designed for doing simple GET requests without the overhead of a large framework like LWP::UserAgent.

It is more correct and more complete than HTTP::Lite. It supports proxies (currently only non-authenticating ones) and redirection. It also correctly resumes after EINTR.

METHODS

  new
    $http = HTTP::Tiny->new( %attributes );

This constructor returns a new HTTP::Tiny object. Valid attributes include:

•   "agent"

    A user-agent string (defaults to 'HTTP::Tiny/$VERSION')

•   "default_headers"

    A hashref of default headers to apply to requests

•   "max_redirect"

    Maximum number of redirects allowed (defaults to 5)

•   "max_size"

    Maximum response size (only when not using a data callback). If defined, responses larger than this will return an exception.

•   "proxy"

    URL of a proxy server to use (default is $ENV{http_proxy} if set)

•   "timeout"

    Request timeout in seconds (default is 60)

Exceptions from "max_size", "timeout" or other errors will result in a pseudo-HTTP status code of 599 and a reason of "Internal Exception". The content field in the response will contain the text of the exception.

  get|head|put|post|delete
    $response = $http->get($url);
    $response = $http->get($url, \%options);
    $response = $http->head($url);

These methods are shorthand for calling "request()" for the given method. The URL must have unsafe characters escaped and international domain names encoded. See "request()" for valid options and a description of the response.

The "success" field of the response will be true if the status code is 2XX.

  post_form
    $response = $http->post_form($url, $form_data);
    $response = $http->post_form($url, $form_data, \%options);

This method executes a "POST" request and sends the key/value pairs from a form data hash or array reference to the given URL with a "content-type" of "application/x-www-form-urlencoded". See documentation for the "www_form_urlencode" method for details on the encoding.

The URL must have unsafe characters escaped and international domain names encoded. See "request()" for valid options and a description of the response. Any "content-type" header or content in the options hashref will be ignored.

The "success" field of the response will be true if the status code is 2XX.

  mirror
    $response = $http->mirror($url, $file, \%options)
    if ( $response->{success} ) {
        print "$file is up to date\n";
    }

Executes a "GET" request for the URL and saves the response body to the file name provided. The URL must have unsafe characters escaped and international domain names encoded. If the file already exists, the request will includes an "If-Modified-Since" header with the modification timestamp of the file. You may specify a different "If-Modified-Since" header yourself in the "$options->{headers}" hash.

The "success" field of the response will be true if the status code is 2XX or if the status code is 304 (unmodified).

If the file was modified and the server response includes a properly formatted "Last-Modified" header, the file modification time will be updated accordingly.

  request
    $response = $http->request($method, $url);
    $response = $http->request($method, $url, \%options);

Executes an HTTP request of the given method type ('GET', 'HEAD', 'POST', 'PUT', etc.) on the given URL. The URL must have unsafe characters escaped and international domain names encoded. A hashref of options may be appended to modify the request.

Valid options are:

•   headers

    A hashref containing headers to include with the request. If the value for a header is an array reference, the header will be output multiple times with each value in the array. These headers over-write any default headers.

•   content

    A scalar to include as the body of the request OR a code reference that will be called iteratively to produce the body of the response

•   trailer_callback

    A code reference that will be called if it exists to provide a hashref of trailing headers (only used with chunked transfer-encoding)

•   data_callback

    A code reference that will be called for each chunks of the response body received.

If the "content" option is a code reference, it will be called iteratively to provide the content body of the request. It should return the empty string or undef when the iterator is exhausted.

If the "data_callback" option is provided, it will be called iteratively until the entire response body is received. The first argument will be a string containing a chunk of the response body, the second argument will be the in-progress response hash reference, as described below. (This allows customizing the action of the callback based on the "status" or "headers" received prior to the content body.)

The "request" method returns a hashref containing the response. The hashref will have the following keys:

•   success

    Boolean indicating whether the operation returned a 2XX status code

•   status

    The HTTP status code of the response

•   reason

    The response phrase returned by the server

•   content

    The body of the response. If the response does not have any content or if a data callback is provided to consume the response body, this will be the empty string

•   headers

    A hashref of header fields. All header field names will be normalized to be lower case. If a header is repeated, the value will be an arrayref; it will otherwise be a scalar string containing the value

On an exception during the execution of the request, the "status" field will contain 599, and the "content" field will contain the text of the exception.

  www_form_urlencode
    $params = $http->www_form_urlencode( $data );
    $response = $http->get("http://example.com/query?$params");

This method converts the key/value pairs from a data hash or array reference into a "x-www-form-urlencoded" string. The keys and values from the data reference will be UTF-8 encoded and escaped per RFC 3986. If a value is an array reference, the key will be repeated with each of the values of the array reference. The key/value pairs in the resulting string will be sorted by key and value.

LIMITATIONS
HTTP::Tiny is conditionally compliant with the HTTP/1.1 specification <http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html>. It attempts to meet all "MUST" requirements of the specification, but does not implement all "SHOULD" requirements.

Some particular limitations of note include:

•   HTTP::Tiny focuses on correct transport. Users are responsible for ensuring that user-defined headers and content are compliant with the HTTP/1.1 specification.

•   Users must ensure that URLs are properly escaped for unsafe characters and that international domain names are properly encoded to ASCII. See URI::Escape, URI::_punycode and Net::IDN::Encode.

•   Redirection is very strict against the specification. Redirection is only automatic for response codes 301, 302 and 307 if the request method is 'GET' or 'HEAD'. Response code 303 is always converted into a 'GET' redirection, as mandated by the specification. There is no automatic support for status 305 ("Use proxy") redirections.

•   Persistent connections are not supported. The "Connection" header will always be set to "close".

•   Direct "https" connections are supported only if IO::Socket::SSL is installed. There is no support for "https" connections via proxy. Any SSL certificate that matches the host is accepted -- SSL certificates are not verified against certificate authorities.

•   Cookies are not directly supported. Users that set a "Cookie" header should also set "max_redirect" to zero to ensure cookies are not inappropriately re-transmitted.

•   Only the "http_proxy" environment variable is supported in the format "http://HOST:PORT/". If a "proxy" argument is passed to "new" (including undef), then the "http_proxy" environment variable is ignored.

•   There is no provision for delaying a request body using an "Expect" header. Unexpected "1XX" responses are silently ignored as per the specification.

•   Only 'chunked' "Transfer-Encoding" is supported.

•   There is no support for a Request-URI of '*' for the 'OPTIONS' request.

SEE ALSO

•   LWP::UserAgent

SUPPORT

  Bugs / Feature Requests
Please report any bugs or feature requests through the issue tracker at http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=HTTP-Tiny <http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=HTTP-Tiny>. You will be notified automatically of any progress on your issue.

  Source Code
This is open source software. The code repository is available for public review and contribution under the terms of the license.

https://github.com/dagolden/p5-http-tiny <https://github.com/dagolden/p5-http-tiny>

  git clone https://github.com/dagolden/p5-http-tiny.git

AUTHORS

•   Christian Hansen <chansen@cpan.org>

•   David Golden <dagolden@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Christian Hansen.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.