[ViewVC] Contents of: cvs/AnyEvent-HTTP/README

NAME
    AnyEvent::HTTP - simple but non-blocking HTTP/HTTPS client

SYNOPSIS
       use AnyEvent::HTTP;

       http_get "http://www.nethype.de/", sub { print $_[1] };

       # ... do something else here

DESCRIPTION
    This module is an AnyEvent user, you need to make sure that you use and
    run a supported event loop.

    This module implements a simple, stateless and non-blocking HTTP client.
    It supports GET, POST and other request methods, cookies and more, all
    on a very low level. It can follow redirects supports proxies and
    automatically limits the number of connections to the values specified
    in the RFC.

    It should generally be a "good client" that is enough for most HTTP
    tasks. Simple tasks should be simple, but complex tasks should still be
    possible as the user retains control over request and response headers.

    The caller is responsible for authentication management, cookies (if the
    simplistic implementation in this module doesn't suffice), referer and
    other high-level protocol details for which this module offers only
    limited support.

  METHODS
    http_get $url, key => value..., $cb->($data, $headers)
        Executes an HTTP-GET request. See the http_request function for
        details on additional parameters and the return value.

    http_head $url, key => value..., $cb->($data, $headers)
        Executes an HTTP-HEAD request. See the http_request function for
        details on additional parameters and the return value.

    http_post $url, $body, key => value..., $cb->($data, $headers)
        Executes an HTTP-POST request with a request body of $body. See the
        http_request function for details on additional parameters and the
        return value.

    http_request $method => $url, key => value..., $cb->($data, $headers)
        Executes a HTTP request of type $method (e.g. "GET", "POST"). The
        URL must be an absolute http or https URL.

        When called in void context, nothing is returned. In other contexts,
        "http_request" returns a "cancellation guard" - you have to keep the
        object at least alive until the callback get called. If the object
        gets destroyed before the callbakc is called, the request will be
        cancelled.

        The callback will be called with the response body data as first
        argument (or "undef" if an error occured), and a hash-ref with
        response headers as second argument.

        All the headers in that hash are lowercased. In addition to the
        response headers, the "pseudo-headers" "HTTPVersion", "Status" and
        "Reason" contain the three parts of the HTTP Status-Line of the same
        name. The pseudo-header "URL" contains the original URL (which can
        differ from the requested URL when following redirects).

        If the server sends a header multiple times, then their contents
        will be joined together with a comma (","), as per the HTTP spec.

        If an internal error occurs, such as not being able to resolve a
        hostname, then $data will be "undef", "$headers->{Status}" will be
        "59x" (usually 599) and the "Reason" pseudo-header will contain an
        error message.

        A typical callback might look like this:

           sub {
              my ($body, $hdr) = @_;

              if ($hdr->{Status} =~ /^2/) {
                 ... everything should be ok
              } else {
                 print "error, $hdr->{Status} $hdr->{Reason}\n";
              }
           }

        Additional parameters are key-value pairs, and are fully optional.
        They include:

        recurse => $count (default: $MAX_RECURSE)
            Whether to recurse requests or not, e.g. on redirects,
            authentication retries and so on, and how often to do so.

        headers => hashref
            The request headers to use. Currently, "http_request" may
            provide its own "Host:", "Content-Length:", "Connection:" and
            "Cookie:" headers and will provide defaults for "User-Agent:"
            and "Referer:".

        timeout => $seconds
            The time-out to use for various stages - each connect attempt
            will reset the timeout, as will read or write activity. Default
            timeout is 5 minutes.

        proxy => [$host, $port[, $scheme]] or undef
            Use the given http proxy for all requests. If not specified,
            then the default proxy (as specified by $ENV{http_proxy}) is
            used.

            $scheme must be either missing or "http" for HTTP, or "https"
            for HTTPS.

        body => $string
            The request body, usually empty. Will be-sent as-is (future
            versions of this module might offer more options).

        cookie_jar => $hash_ref
            Passing this parameter enables (simplified) cookie-processing,
            loosely based on the original netscape specification.

            The $hash_ref must be an (initially empty) hash reference which
            will get updated automatically. It is possible to save the
            cookie_jar to persistent storage with something like JSON or
            Storable, but this is not recommended, as expiry times are
            currently being ignored.

            Note that this cookie implementation is not of very high
            quality, nor meant to be complete. If you want complete cookie
            management you have to do that on your own. "cookie_jar" is
            meant as a quick fix to get some cookie-using sites working.
            Cookies are a privacy disaster, do not use them unless required
            to.

        tls_ctx => $scheme | $tls_ctx
            Specifies the AnyEvent::TLS context to be used for https
            connections. This parameter follows the same rules as the
            "tls_ctx" parameter to AnyEvent::Handle, but additionally, the
            two strings "low" or "high" can be specified, which give you a
            predefined low-security (no verification, highest compatibility)
            and high-security (CA and common-name verification) TLS context.

            The default for this option is "low", which could be interpreted
            as "give me the page, no matter what".

        on_header => $callback->($headers)
            When specified, this callback will be called with the header
            hash as soon as headers have been successfully received from the
            remote server (not on locally-generated errors).

            It has to return either true (in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will
            continue), or false, in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will cancel
            the download (and call the finish callback with an error code of
            598).

            This callback is useful, among other things, to quickly reject
            unwanted content, which, if it is supposed to be rare, can be
            faster than first doing a "HEAD" request.

            Example: cancel the request unless the content-type is
            "text/html".

               on_header => sub {
                  $_[0]{"content-type"} =~ /^text\/html\s*(?:;|$)/
               },

        on_body => $callback->($partial_body, $headers)
            When specified, all body data will be passed to this callback
            instead of to the completion callback. The completion callback
            will get the empty string instead of the body data.

            It has to return either true (in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will
            continue), or false, in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will cancel
            the download (and call the completion callback with an error
            code of 598).

            This callback is useful when the data is too large to be held in
            memory (so the callback writes it to a file) or when only some
            information should be extracted, or when the body should be
            processed incrementally.

            It is usually preferred over doing your own body handling via
            "want_body_handle".

        want_body_handle => $enable
            When enabled (default is disabled), the behaviour of
            AnyEvent::HTTP changes considerably: after parsing the headers,
            and instead of downloading the body (if any), the completion
            callback will be called. Instead of the $body argument
            containing the body data, the callback will receive the
            AnyEvent::Handle object associated with the connection. In error
            cases, "undef" will be passed. When there is no body (e.g.
            status 304), the empty string will be passed.

            The handle object might or might not be in TLS mode, might be
            connected to a proxy, be a persistent connection etc., and
            configured in unspecified ways. The user is responsible for this
            handle (it will not be used by this module anymore).

            This is useful with some push-type services, where, after the
            initial headers, an interactive protocol is used (typical
            example would be the push-style twitter API which starts a
            JSON/XML stream).

            If you think you need this, first have a look at "on_body", to
            see if that doesn'T solve your problem in a better way.

        Example: make a simple HTTP GET request for http://www.nethype.de/

           http_request GET => "http://www.nethype.de/", sub {
              my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
              print "$body\n";
           };

        Example: make a HTTP HEAD request on https://www.google.com/, use a
        timeout of 30 seconds.

           http_request
              GET     => "https://www.google.com",
              timeout => 30,
              sub {
                 my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
                 use Data::Dumper;
                 print Dumper $hdr;
              }
           ;

        Example: make another simple HTTP GET request, but immediately try
        to cancel it.

           my $request = http_request GET => "http://www.nethype.de/", sub {
              my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
              print "$body\n";
           };

           undef $request;

  GLOBAL FUNCTIONS AND VARIABLES
    AnyEvent::HTTP::set_proxy "proxy-url"
        Sets the default proxy server to use. The proxy-url must begin with
        a string of the form "http://host:port" (optionally "https:...").

    $AnyEvent::HTTP::MAX_RECURSE
        The default value for the "recurse" request parameter (default: 10).

    $AnyEvent::HTTP::USERAGENT
        The default value for the "User-Agent" header (the default is
        "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; U; AnyEvent-HTTP/$VERSION;
        +http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/AnyEvent)").

    $AnyEvent::HTTP::MAX_PER_HOST
        The maximum number of concurrent conenctions to the same host
        (identified by the hostname). If the limit is exceeded, then the
        additional requests are queued until previous connections are
        closed.

        The default value for this is 4, and it is highly advisable to not
        increase it.

    $AnyEvent::HTTP::ACTIVE
        The number of active connections. This is not the number of
        currently running requests, but the number of currently open and
        non-idle TCP connections. This number of can be useful for
        load-leveling.

SEE ALSO
    AnyEvent.

AUTHOR
       Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
       http://home.schmorp.de/

    With many thanks to Дмитрий Шалашов, who provided
    countless testcases and bugreports.

Revision:	1.8
Committed:	Tue Jul 7 00:15:32 2009 UTC (14 years, 10 months ago) by root
Branch:	MAIN
CVS Tags:	rel-1_4
Changes since 1.7:	+87 -16 lines
Log Message:	1.4
#	Content
1	NAME
2	AnyEvent::HTTP - simple but non-blocking HTTP/HTTPS client
3
4	SYNOPSIS
5	use AnyEvent::HTTP;
6
7	http_get "http://www.nethype.de/", sub { print $_[1] };
8
9	# ... do something else here
10
11	DESCRIPTION
12	This module is an AnyEvent user, you need to make sure that you use and
13	run a supported event loop.
14
15	This module implements a simple, stateless and non-blocking HTTP client.
16	It supports GET, POST and other request methods, cookies and more, all
17	on a very low level. It can follow redirects supports proxies and
18	automatically limits the number of connections to the values specified
19	in the RFC.
20
21	It should generally be a "good client" that is enough for most HTTP
22	tasks. Simple tasks should be simple, but complex tasks should still be
23	possible as the user retains control over request and response headers.
24
25	The caller is responsible for authentication management, cookies (if the
26	simplistic implementation in this module doesn't suffice), referer and
27	other high-level protocol details for which this module offers only
28	limited support.
29
30	METHODS
31	http_get $url, key => value..., $cb->($data, $headers)
32	Executes an HTTP-GET request. See the http_request function for
33	details on additional parameters and the return value.
34
35	http_head $url, key => value..., $cb->($data, $headers)
36	Executes an HTTP-HEAD request. See the http_request function for
37	details on additional parameters and the return value.
38
39	http_post $url, $body, key => value..., $cb->($data, $headers)
40	Executes an HTTP-POST request with a request body of $body. See the
41	http_request function for details on additional parameters and the
42	return value.
43
44	http_request $method => $url, key => value..., $cb->($data, $headers)
45	Executes a HTTP request of type $method (e.g. "GET", "POST"). The
46	URL must be an absolute http or https URL.
47
48	When called in void context, nothing is returned. In other contexts,
49	"http_request" returns a "cancellation guard" - you have to keep the
50	object at least alive until the callback get called. If the object
51	gets destroyed before the callbakc is called, the request will be
52	cancelled.
53
54	The callback will be called with the response body data as first
55	argument (or "undef" if an error occured), and a hash-ref with
56	response headers as second argument.
57
58	All the headers in that hash are lowercased. In addition to the
59	response headers, the "pseudo-headers" "HTTPVersion", "Status" and
60	"Reason" contain the three parts of the HTTP Status-Line of the same
61	name. The pseudo-header "URL" contains the original URL (which can
62	differ from the requested URL when following redirects).
63
64	If the server sends a header multiple times, then their contents
65	will be joined together with a comma (","), as per the HTTP spec.
66
67	If an internal error occurs, such as not being able to resolve a
68	hostname, then $data will be "undef", "$headers->{Status}" will be
69	"59x" (usually 599) and the "Reason" pseudo-header will contain an
70	error message.
71
72	A typical callback might look like this:
73
74	sub {
75	my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
76
77	if ($hdr->{Status} =~ /^2/) {
78	... everything should be ok
79	} else {
80	print "error, $hdr->{Status} $hdr->{Reason}\n";
81	}
82	}
83
84	Additional parameters are key-value pairs, and are fully optional.
85	They include:
86
87	recurse => $count (default: $MAX_RECURSE)
88	Whether to recurse requests or not, e.g. on redirects,
89	authentication retries and so on, and how often to do so.
90
91	headers => hashref
92	The request headers to use. Currently, "http_request" may
93	provide its own "Host:", "Content-Length:", "Connection:" and
94	"Cookie:" headers and will provide defaults for "User-Agent:"
95	and "Referer:".
96
97	timeout => $seconds
98	The time-out to use for various stages - each connect attempt
99	will reset the timeout, as will read or write activity. Default
100	timeout is 5 minutes.
101
102	proxy => [$host, $port[, $scheme]] or undef
103	Use the given http proxy for all requests. If not specified,
104	then the default proxy (as specified by $ENV{http_proxy}) is
105	used.
106
107	$scheme must be either missing or "http" for HTTP, or "https"
108	for HTTPS.
109
110	body => $string
111	The request body, usually empty. Will be-sent as-is (future
112	versions of this module might offer more options).
113
114	cookie_jar => $hash_ref
115	Passing this parameter enables (simplified) cookie-processing,
116	loosely based on the original netscape specification.
117
118	The $hash_ref must be an (initially empty) hash reference which
119	will get updated automatically. It is possible to save the
120	cookie_jar to persistent storage with something like JSON or
121	Storable, but this is not recommended, as expiry times are
122	currently being ignored.
123
124	Note that this cookie implementation is not of very high
125	quality, nor meant to be complete. If you want complete cookie
126	management you have to do that on your own. "cookie_jar" is
127	meant as a quick fix to get some cookie-using sites working.
128	Cookies are a privacy disaster, do not use them unless required
129	to.
130
131	tls_ctx => $scheme \| $tls_ctx
132	Specifies the AnyEvent::TLS context to be used for https
133	connections. This parameter follows the same rules as the
134	"tls_ctx" parameter to AnyEvent::Handle, but additionally, the
135	two strings "low" or "high" can be specified, which give you a
136	predefined low-security (no verification, highest compatibility)
137	and high-security (CA and common-name verification) TLS context.
138
139	The default for this option is "low", which could be interpreted
140	as "give me the page, no matter what".
141
142	on_header => $callback->($headers)
143	When specified, this callback will be called with the header
144	hash as soon as headers have been successfully received from the
145	remote server (not on locally-generated errors).
146
147	It has to return either true (in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will
148	continue), or false, in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will cancel
149	the download (and call the finish callback with an error code of
150	598).
151
152	This callback is useful, among other things, to quickly reject
153	unwanted content, which, if it is supposed to be rare, can be
154	faster than first doing a "HEAD" request.
155
156	Example: cancel the request unless the content-type is
157	"text/html".
158
159	on_header => sub {
160	$_[0]{"content-type"} =~ /^text\/html\s*(?:;\|$)/
161	},
162
163	on_body => $callback->($partial_body, $headers)
164	When specified, all body data will be passed to this callback
165	instead of to the completion callback. The completion callback
166	will get the empty string instead of the body data.
167
168	It has to return either true (in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will
169	continue), or false, in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will cancel
170	the download (and call the completion callback with an error
171	code of 598).
172
173	This callback is useful when the data is too large to be held in
174	memory (so the callback writes it to a file) or when only some
175	information should be extracted, or when the body should be
176	processed incrementally.
177
178	It is usually preferred over doing your own body handling via
179	"want_body_handle".
180
181	want_body_handle => $enable
182	When enabled (default is disabled), the behaviour of
183	AnyEvent::HTTP changes considerably: after parsing the headers,
184	and instead of downloading the body (if any), the completion
185	callback will be called. Instead of the $body argument
186	containing the body data, the callback will receive the
187	AnyEvent::Handle object associated with the connection. In error
188	cases, "undef" will be passed. When there is no body (e.g.
189	status 304), the empty string will be passed.
190
191	The handle object might or might not be in TLS mode, might be
192	connected to a proxy, be a persistent connection etc., and
193	configured in unspecified ways. The user is responsible for this
194	handle (it will not be used by this module anymore).
195
196	This is useful with some push-type services, where, after the
197	initial headers, an interactive protocol is used (typical
198	example would be the push-style twitter API which starts a
199	JSON/XML stream).
200
201	If you think you need this, first have a look at "on_body", to
202	see if that doesn'T solve your problem in a better way.
203
204	Example: make a simple HTTP GET request for http://www.nethype.de/
205
206	http_request GET => "http://www.nethype.de/", sub {
207	my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
208	print "$body\n";
209	};
210
211	Example: make a HTTP HEAD request on https://www.google.com/, use a
212	timeout of 30 seconds.
213
214	http_request
215	GET => "https://www.google.com",
216	timeout => 30,
217	sub {
218	my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
219	use Data::Dumper;
220	print Dumper $hdr;
221	}
222	;
223
224	Example: make another simple HTTP GET request, but immediately try
225	to cancel it.
226
227	my $request = http_request GET => "http://www.nethype.de/", sub {
228	my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
229	print "$body\n";
230	};
231
232	undef $request;
233
234	GLOBAL FUNCTIONS AND VARIABLES
235	AnyEvent::HTTP::set_proxy "proxy-url"
236	Sets the default proxy server to use. The proxy-url must begin with
237	a string of the form "http://host:port" (optionally "https:...").
238
239	$AnyEvent::HTTP::MAX_RECURSE
240	The default value for the "recurse" request parameter (default: 10).
241
242	$AnyEvent::HTTP::USERAGENT
243	The default value for the "User-Agent" header (the default is
244	"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; U; AnyEvent-HTTP/$VERSION;
245	+http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/AnyEvent)").
246
247	$AnyEvent::HTTP::MAX_PER_HOST
248	The maximum number of concurrent conenctions to the same host
249	(identified by the hostname). If the limit is exceeded, then the
250	additional requests are queued until previous connections are
251	closed.
252
253	The default value for this is 4, and it is highly advisable to not
254	increase it.
255
256	$AnyEvent::HTTP::ACTIVE
257	The number of active connections. This is not the number of
258	currently running requests, but the number of currently open and
259	non-idle TCP connections. This number of can be useful for
260	load-leveling.
261
262	SEE ALSO
263	AnyEvent.
264
265	AUTHOR
266	Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
267	http://home.schmorp.de/
268
269	With many thanks to Дмитрий Шалашов, who provided
270	countless testcases and bugreports.
271