<?xml version="1.0" encoding="latin1" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>2004</year><year>2009</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
under the License.
</legalnotice>
<title>HTTP Client</title>
<prepared>Ingela Anderton Andin</prepared>
<responsible></responsible>
<docno></docno>
<approved></approved>
<checked></checked>
<date></date>
<rev></rev>
<file>http_client.xml</file>
</header>
<section>
<title>Introduction</title>
<p>The HTTP client default profile will be started when the inets
application is started and is then available to all processes on
that erlang node. Other profiles may also be started at
application startup, or profiles can be started and stopped
dynamically in runtime. Each client profile will spawn a new
process to handle each request unless there is a possibility to use
a persistent connection with or without pipelining.
The client will add a host header and an empty
te header if there are no such headers present in the request.</p>
<p>The clients supports ipv6 as long as the underlying mechanisms also do
so.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Configuration</title>
<p> What to put in the erlang node application configuration file
in order to start a profile at application startup.</p>
<pre>
[{inets, [{services, [{httpc, PropertyList}]}]}]
</pre>
<p>For valid properties see <seealso
marker="http">http(3)</seealso></p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Using the HTTP Client API</title>
<code type="erl">
1 > inets:start().
ok
</code>
<p> The following calls uses the default client profile.
Use the proxy "www-proxy.mycompany.com:8000",
but not for requests to localhost. This will apply to all subsequent
requests</p>
<code type="erl">
2 > http:set_options([{proxy, {{"www-proxy.mycompany.com", 8000},
["localhost"]}}]).
ok
</code>
<p>An ordinary synchronous request. </p>
<code type="erl">
3 > {ok, {{Version, 200, ReasonPhrase}, Headers, Body}} =
http:request(get, {"http://www.erlang.org", []}, [], []).
</code>
<p>With all default values, as above, a get request can also be written
like this.</p>
<code type="erl">
4 > {ok, {{Version, 200, ReasonPhrase}, Headers, Body}} =
http:request("http://www.erlang.org").
</code>
<p>An ordinary asynchronous request. The result will be sent
to the calling process on the form {http, {ReqestId, Result}}</p>
<code type="erl">
5 > {ok, RequestId} =
http:request(get, {"http://www.erlang.org", []}, [], [{sync, false}]).
</code>
<p>In this case the calling process is the shell, so we receive the
result.</p>
<code type="erl">
6 > receive {http, {RequestId, Result}} -> ok after 500 -> error end.
ok
</code>
<p>Send a request with a specified connection header. </p>
<code type="erl">
7 > {ok, {{NewVersion, 200, NewReasonPhrase}, NewHeaders, NewBody}} =
http:request(get, {"http://www.erlang.org", [{"connection", "close"}]},
[], []).
</code>
<p>Start a HTTP client profile. </p>
<code><![CDATA[
8 > {ok, Pid} = inets:start(httpc, [{profile, foo}]).
{ok, <0.45.0>}
]]></code>
<p>The new profile has no proxy settings so the connection will
be refused</p>
<code type="erl">
9 > http:request("http://www.erlang.org", foo).
{error,econnrefused}
</code>
<p>Stop a HTTP client profile. </p>
<code type="erl">
10 > inets:stop(httpc, foo).
ok
</code>
<p>Alternatively:</p>
<code type="erl">
10 > inets:stop(httpc, Pid).
ok
</code>
</section>
</chapter>
