HTTP::Tiny - A small, simple, correct HTTP/1.1 client
version 0.025
use HTTP::Tiny;
my $response = HTTP::Tiny->new->get('https://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};
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.
$http = HTTP::Tiny->new( %attributes );
This constructor returns a new HTTP::Tiny object. Valid attributes include:
agent
A user-agent string (defaults to 'HTTP-Tiny/$VERSION'). If
agent
ends in a space character, the default user-agent string is appended.default_headers
A hashref of default headers to apply to requests
local_address
The local IP address to bind to
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)
verify_SSL
A boolean that indicates whether to validate the SSL certificate of an
https
connection (default is false)SSL_options
A hashref of
SSL_*
options to pass through to IO::Socket::SSL
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.
See "SSL SUPPORT" for more on the verify_SSL
and SSL_options
attributes.
$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.
$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.
$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.
$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 request
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
url
URL that provided the response. This is the URL of the request unless there were redirections, in which case it is the last URL queried in a redirection chain
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.
$params = $http->www_form_urlencode( $data );
$response = $http->get("https://example.com/query?$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.
Direct https
connections are supported only if IO::Socket::SSL 1.56 or greater and Net::SSLeay 1.49 or greater are installed. An exception will be thrown if a new enough versions of these modules not installed or if the SSL encryption fails. There is no support for https
connections via proxy (i.e. RFC 2817).
SSL provides two distinct capabilities:
Encrypted communication channel
Verification of server identity
By default, HTTP::Tiny does not verify server identity.
Server identity verification is controversial and potentially tricky because it depends on a (usually paid) third-party Certificate Authority (CA) trust model to validate a certificate as legitimate. This discriminates against servers with self-signed certificates or certificates signed by free, community-driven CA's such as CAcert.org.
By default, HTTP::Tiny does not make any assumptions about your trust model, threat level or risk tolerance. It just aims to give you an encrypted channel when you need one.
Setting the verify_SSL
attribute to a true value will make HTTP::Tiny verify that an SSL connection has a valid SSL certificate corresponding to the host name of the connection and that the SSL certificate has been verified by a CA. Assuming you trust the CA, this will protect against a man-in-the-middle attack. If you are concerned about security, you should enable this option.
Certificate verification requires a file containing trusted CA certificates. If the Mozilla::CA module is installed, HTTP::Tiny will use the CA file included with it as a source of trusted CA's. (This means you trust Mozilla, the author of Mozilla::CA, the CPAN mirror where you got Mozilla::CA, the toolchain used to install it, and your operating system security, right?)
If that module is not available, then HTTP::Tiny will search several system-specific default locations for a CA certificate file:
/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
/etc/ssl/ca-bundle.pem
An exception will be raised if verify_SSL
is true and no CA certificate file is available.
If you desire complete control over SSL connections, the SSL_options
attribute lets you provide a hash reference that will be passed through to IO::Socket::SSL::start_SSL()
, overriding any options set by HTTP::Tiny. For example, to provide your own trusted CA file:
SSL_options => {
SSL_ca_file => $file_path,
}
The SSL_options
attribute could also be used for such things as providing a client certificate for authentication to a server or controlling the choice of cipher used for the SSL connection. See IO::Socket::SSL documentation for details.
HTTP::Tiny is conditionally compliant with the HTTP/1.1 specification. 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 toclose
.Cookies are not directly supported. Users that set a
Cookie
header should also setmax_redirect
to zero to ensure cookies are not inappropriately re-transmitted.Only the
http_proxy
environment variable is supported in the formathttps://HOST:PORT/
. If aproxy
argument is passed tonew
(including undef), then thehttp_proxy
environment variable is ignored.There is no provision for delaying a request body using an
Expect
header. Unexpected1XX
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.
There is no support for IPv6 of any kind.
Please report any bugs or feature requests through the issue tracker at https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=HTTP-Tiny. You will be notified automatically of any progress on your issue.
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/http-tiny
git clone git:https://github.com/dagolden/http-tiny.git
Christian Hansen <[email protected]>
David Golden <[email protected]>
Mike Doherty <[email protected]>
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.