[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:" (this can be suppressed by using "undef" for
            these headers in which case they won't be sent at all).

        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, "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", but in case of streaming APIs, where HTTP is
            only used to create a connection, "want_body_handle" is the
            better alternative, as it allows you to install your own event
            handler, reducing resource usage.

        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 connections 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:	1.10
Committed:	Wed Aug 5 16:43:47 2009 UTC (14 years, 9 months ago) by root
Branch:	MAIN
CVS Tags:	rel-1_42
Changes since 1.9:	+5 -4 lines
Log Message:	1.42
#	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:" (this can be suppressed by using "undef" for
96	these headers in which case they won't be sent at all).
97
98	timeout => $seconds
99	The time-out to use for various stages - each connect attempt
100	will reset the timeout, as will read or write activity. Default
101	timeout is 5 minutes.
102
103	proxy => [$host, $port[, $scheme]] or undef
104	Use the given http proxy for all requests. If not specified,
105	then the default proxy (as specified by $ENV{http_proxy}) is
106	used.
107
108	$scheme must be either missing, "http" for HTTP or "https" for
109	HTTPS.
110
111	body => $string
112	The request body, usually empty. Will be-sent as-is (future
113	versions of this module might offer more options).
114
115	cookie_jar => $hash_ref
116	Passing this parameter enables (simplified) cookie-processing,
117	loosely based on the original netscape specification.
118
119	The $hash_ref must be an (initially empty) hash reference which
120	will get updated automatically. It is possible to save the
121	cookie_jar to persistent storage with something like JSON or
122	Storable, but this is not recommended, as expiry times are
123	currently being ignored.
124
125	Note that this cookie implementation is not of very high
126	quality, nor meant to be complete. If you want complete cookie
127	management you have to do that on your own. "cookie_jar" is
128	meant as a quick fix to get some cookie-using sites working.
129	Cookies are a privacy disaster, do not use them unless required
130	to.
131
132	tls_ctx => $scheme \| $tls_ctx
133	Specifies the AnyEvent::TLS context to be used for https
134	connections. This parameter follows the same rules as the
135	"tls_ctx" parameter to AnyEvent::Handle, but additionally, the
136	two strings "low" or "high" can be specified, which give you a
137	predefined low-security (no verification, highest compatibility)
138	and high-security (CA and common-name verification) TLS context.
139
140	The default for this option is "low", which could be interpreted
141	as "give me the page, no matter what".
142
143	on_header => $callback->($headers)
144	When specified, this callback will be called with the header
145	hash as soon as headers have been successfully received from the
146	remote server (not on locally-generated errors).
147
148	It has to return either true (in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will
149	continue), or false, in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will cancel
150	the download (and call the finish callback with an error code of
151	598).
152
153	This callback is useful, among other things, to quickly reject
154	unwanted content, which, if it is supposed to be rare, can be
155	faster than first doing a "HEAD" request.
156
157	Example: cancel the request unless the content-type is
158	"text/html".
159
160	on_header => sub {
161	$_[0]{"content-type"} =~ /^text\/html\s*(?:;\|$)/
162	},
163
164	on_body => $callback->($partial_body, $headers)
165	When specified, all body data will be passed to this callback
166	instead of to the completion callback. The completion callback
167	will get the empty string instead of the body data.
168
169	It has to return either true (in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will
170	continue), or false, in which case AnyEvent::HTTP will cancel
171	the download (and call the completion callback with an error
172	code of 598).
173
174	This callback is useful when the data is too large to be held in
175	memory (so the callback writes it to a file) or when only some
176	information should be extracted, or when the body should be
177	processed incrementally.
178
179	It is usually preferred over doing your own body handling via
180	"want_body_handle", but in case of streaming APIs, where HTTP is
181	only used to create a connection, "want_body_handle" is the
182	better alternative, as it allows you to install your own event
183	handler, reducing resource usage.
184
185	want_body_handle => $enable
186	When enabled (default is disabled), the behaviour of
187	AnyEvent::HTTP changes considerably: after parsing the headers,
188	and instead of downloading the body (if any), the completion
189	callback will be called. Instead of the $body argument
190	containing the body data, the callback will receive the
191	AnyEvent::Handle object associated with the connection. In error
192	cases, "undef" will be passed. When there is no body (e.g.
193	status 304), the empty string will be passed.
194
195	The handle object might or might not be in TLS mode, might be
196	connected to a proxy, be a persistent connection etc., and
197	configured in unspecified ways. The user is responsible for this
198	handle (it will not be used by this module anymore).
199
200	This is useful with some push-type services, where, after the
201	initial headers, an interactive protocol is used (typical
202	example would be the push-style twitter API which starts a
203	JSON/XML stream).
204
205	If you think you need this, first have a look at "on_body", to
206	see if that doesn't solve your problem in a better way.
207
208	Example: make a simple HTTP GET request for http://www.nethype.de/
209
210	http_request GET => "http://www.nethype.de/", sub {
211	my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
212	print "$body\n";
213	};
214
215	Example: make a HTTP HEAD request on https://www.google.com/, use a
216	timeout of 30 seconds.
217
218	http_request
219	GET => "https://www.google.com",
220	timeout => 30,
221	sub {
222	my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
223	use Data::Dumper;
224	print Dumper $hdr;
225	}
226	;
227
228	Example: make another simple HTTP GET request, but immediately try
229	to cancel it.
230
231	my $request = http_request GET => "http://www.nethype.de/", sub {
232	my ($body, $hdr) = @_;
233	print "$body\n";
234	};
235
236	undef $request;
237
238	GLOBAL FUNCTIONS AND VARIABLES
239	AnyEvent::HTTP::set_proxy "proxy-url"
240	Sets the default proxy server to use. The proxy-url must begin with
241	a string of the form "http://host:port" (optionally "https:...").
242
243	$AnyEvent::HTTP::MAX_RECURSE
244	The default value for the "recurse" request parameter (default: 10).
245
246	$AnyEvent::HTTP::USERAGENT
247	The default value for the "User-Agent" header (the default is
248	"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; U; AnyEvent-HTTP/$VERSION;
249	+http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/AnyEvent)").
250
251	$AnyEvent::HTTP::MAX_PER_HOST
252	The maximum number of concurrent connections to the same host
253	(identified by the hostname). If the limit is exceeded, then the
254	additional requests are queued until previous connections are
255	closed.
256
257	The default value for this is 4, and it is highly advisable to not
258	increase it.
259
260	$AnyEvent::HTTP::ACTIVE
261	The number of active connections. This is not the number of
262	currently running requests, but the number of currently open and
263	non-idle TCP connections. This number of can be useful for
264	load-leveling.
265
266	SEE ALSO
267	AnyEvent.
268
269	AUTHOR
270	Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
271	http://home.schmorp.de/
272
273	With many thanks to Дмитрий Шалашов, who provided
274	countless testcases and bugreports.
275