HTTP::Tiny
- NAME
- VERSION
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- METHODS
- SSL SUPPORT
- PROXY SUPPORT
- LIMITATIONS
- SEE ALSO
- SUPPORT
- AUTHORS
- CONTRIBUTORS
- COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
NAME
HTTP::Tiny - A small, simple, correct HTTP/1.1 client
VERSION
version 0.054
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 requests without the overhead of a large framework like LWP::UserAgent.
It is more correct and more complete than HTTP::Lite. It supports proxies and redirection. It also correctly resumes after EINTR.
If IO::Socket::IP 0.25 or later is installed, HTTP::Tiny will use it instead of IO::Socket::INET for transparent support for both IPv4 and IPv6.
Cookie support requires HTTP::CookieJar or an equivalent class.
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'). Ifagent
— ends in a space character, the default user-agent string is appended. -
cookie_jar
— An instance of HTTP::CookieJar — or equivalent class that supports theadd
andcookie_header
methods -
default_headers
— A hashref of default headers to apply to requests -
local_address
— The local IP address to bind to -
keep_alive
— Whether to reuse the last connection (if for the same scheme, host and port) (defaults to 1) -
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. -
http_proxy
— URL of a proxy server to use for HTTP connections (default is$ENV{http_proxy}
— if set) -
https_proxy
— URL of a proxy server to use for HTTPS connections (default is$ENV{https_proxy}
— if set) -
proxy
— URL of a generic proxy server for both HTTP and HTTPS connections (default is$ENV{all_proxy}
— if set) -
no_proxy
— List of domain suffixes that should not be proxied. Must be a comma-separated string or an array reference. (default is$ENV{no_proxy}
—) -
timeout
— Request timeout in seconds (default is 60) -
verify_SSL
— A boolean that indicates whether to validate the SSL certificate of anhttps
— connection (default is false) -
SSL_options
— A hashref ofSSL_*
— options to pass through to IO::Socket::SSL
Passing an explicit undef
for proxy
, http_proxy
or https_proxy
will
prevent getting the corresponding proxies from the environment.
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.
The keep_alive
parameter enables a persistent connection, but only to a
single destination scheme, host and port. Also, if any connection-relevant
attributes are modified, or if the process ID or thread ID change, the
persistent connection will be dropped. If you want persistent connections
across multiple destinations, use multiple HTTP::Tiny objects.
See SSL SUPPORT for more on the verify_SSL
and SSL_options
attributes.
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
. If data is provided as an array
reference, the order is preserved; if provided as a hash reference, the terms
are sorted on key and value for consistency. 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
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 include 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.
If the URL includes a "user:password" stanza, they will be used for Basic-style authorization headers. (Authorization headers will not be included in a redirected request.) For example:
- $http->request('GET', 'http://Aladdin:open sesame@example.com/');
If the "user:password" stanza contains reserved characters, they must be percent-escaped:
- $http->request('GET', 'http://john%40example.com:password@example.com/');
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.
The Host
header is generated from the URL in accordance with RFC 2616. It
is a fatal error to specify Host
in the headers
option. Other headers
may be ignored or overwritten if necessary for transport compliance.
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 content
option is the empty string, no content-type
or
content-length
headers will be generated.
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.
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. If data is provided as a hash reference, the key/value pairs in the
resulting string will be sorted by key and value for consistent ordering.
SSL SUPPORT
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 new enough versions of these modules are not installed or if the SSL
encryption fails. An https
connection may be made via an http
proxy that
supports the CONNECT command (i.e. RFC 2817). You may not proxy https
via
a proxy that itself requires https
to communicate.
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.
PROXY SUPPORT
HTTP::Tiny can proxy both http
and https
requests. Only Basic proxy
authorization is supported and it must be provided as part of the proxy URL:
http://user:pass@proxy.example.com/
.
HTTP::Tiny supports the following proxy environment variables:
-
http_proxy or HTTP_PROXY
-
https_proxy or HTTPS_PROXY
-
all_proxy or ALL_PROXY
If the REQUEST_METHOD
environment variable is set, then this might be a CGI
process and HTTP_PROXY
would be set from the Proxy:
header, which is a
security risk. If REQUEST_METHOD
is set, HTTP_PROXY
(the upper case
variant only) is ignored.
Tunnelling https
over an http
proxy using the CONNECT method is
supported. If your proxy uses https
itself, you can not tunnel https
over it.
Be warned that proxying an https
connection opens you to the risk of a
man-in-the-middle attack by the proxy server.
The no_proxy
environment variable is supported in the format of a
comma-separated list of domain extensions proxy should not be used for.
Proxy arguments passed to new
will override their corresponding
environment variables.
LIMITATIONS
HTTP::Tiny is conditionally compliant with the HTTP/1.1 specifications:
-
"Message Syntax and Routing" [RFC7230]
-
"Semantics and Content" [RFC7231]
-
"Conditional Requests" [RFC7232]
-
"Range Requests" [RFC7233]
-
"Caching" [RFC7234]
-
"Authentication" [RFC7235]
It attempts to meet all "MUST" requirements of the specification, but does not implement all "SHOULD" requirements. (Note: it was developed against the earlier RFC 2616 specification and may not yet meet the revised RFC 7230-7235 spec.)
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.
-
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.
Despite the limitations listed above, HTTP::Tiny is considered feature-complete. New feature requests should be directed to HTTP::Tiny::UA.
SEE ALSO
-
HTTP::Tiny::UA - Higher level UA features for HTTP::Tiny
-
HTTP::Thin - HTTP::Tiny wrapper with HTTP::Request/HTTP::Response compatibility
-
HTTP::Tiny::Mech - Wrap WWW::Mechanize instance in HTTP::Tiny compatible interface
-
IO::Socket::IP - Required for IPv6 support
-
IO::Socket::SSL - Required for SSL support
-
LWP::UserAgent - If HTTP::Tiny isn't enough for you, this is the "standard" way to do things
-
Mozilla::CA - Required if you want to validate SSL certificates
-
Net::SSLeay - Required for SSL support
SUPPORT
Bugs / Feature Requests
Please report any bugs or feature requests through the issue tracker at https://github.com/chansen/p5-http-tiny/issues. 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/chansen/p5-http-tiny
- git clone https://github.com/chansen/p5-http-tiny.git
AUTHORS
-
Christian Hansen <chansen@cpan.org>
-
David Golden <dagolden@cpan.org>
CONTRIBUTORS
-
Alan Gardner <gardner@pythian.com>
-
Alessandro Ghedini <al3xbio@gmail.com>
-
Brad Gilbert <bgills@cpan.org>
-
Chris Nehren <apeiron@cpan.org>
-
Chris Weyl <cweyl@alumni.drew.edu>
-
Claes Jakobsson <claes@surfar.nu>
-
Clinton Gormley <clint@traveljury.com>
-
Craig Berry <cberry@cpan.org>
-
David Mitchell <davem@iabyn.com>
-
Dean Pearce <pearce@pythian.com>
-
Edward Zborowski <ed@rubensteintech.com>
-
James Raspass <jraspass@gmail.com>
-
Jess Robinson <castaway@desert-island.me.uk>
-
Lukas Eklund <leklund@gmail.com>
-
Martin J. Evans <mjegh@ntlworld.com>
-
Martin-Louis Bright <mlbright@gmail.com>
-
Mike Doherty <doherty@cpan.org>
-
Olaf Alders <olaf@wundersolutions.com>
-
Petr Písař <ppisar@redhat.com>
-
Serguei Trouchelle <stro@cpan.org>
-
Sören Kornetzki <soeren.kornetzki@delti.com>
-
Syohei YOSHIDA <syohex@gmail.com>
-
Tom Hukins <tom@eborcom.com>
-
Tony Cook <tony@develop-help.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2015 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.