SYNOPSIS

require HTTP::Request;
$request = HTTP::Request->new(GET => 'http://www.example.com/');

and usually used like this:

 $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
 $response = $ua->request($request);

DESCRIPTION

"HTTP::Request" is a class encapsulating HTTP style requests, consisting of a request line, some headers, and a content body. Note that the LWP library uses HTTP style requests even for non-HTTP protocols. Instances of this class are usually passed to the request() method of an "LWP::UserAgent" object.

"HTTP::Request" is a subclass of "HTTP::Message" and therefore inherits its methods. The following additional methods are available:

$r = HTTP::Request->new( $method, $uri )

$r = HTTP::Request->new( $method, $uri, $header )

$r = HTTP::Request->new( $method, $uri, $header, $content )

Constructs a new "HTTP::Request" object describing a request on the object $uri using method $method. The $method argument must be a string. The $uri argument can be either a string, or a reference to a "URI" object. The optional $header argument should be a reference to an "HTTP::Headers" object or a plain array reference of key/value pairs. The optional $content argument should be a string of bytes.

$r = HTTP::Request->parse( $str )

This constructs a new request object by parsing the given string.

$r->method

$r->method( $val )

This is used to get/set the method attribute. The method should be a short string like ``GET'', ``HEAD'', ``PUT'' or ``POST''.

$r->uri

$r->uri( $val )

This is used to get/set the uri attribute. The $val can be a reference to a URI object or a plain string. If a string is given, then it should be parsable as an absolute URI.

$r->header( $field )

$r->header( $field => $value )

This is used to get/set header values and it is inherited from "HTTP::Headers" via "HTTP::Message". See HTTP::Headers for details and other similar methods that can be used to access the headers.

$r->accept_decodable

This will set the "Accept-Encoding" header to the list of encodings that decoded_content() can decode.

$r->content

$r->content( $bytes )

This is used to get/set the content and it is inherited from the "HTTP::Message" base class. See HTTP::Message for details and other methods that can be used to access the content.

Note that the content should be a string of bytes. Strings in perl can contain characters outside the range of a byte. The "Encode" module can be used to turn such strings into a string of bytes.

$r->as_string

$r->as_string( $eol )

Method returning a textual representation of the request.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 1995-2004 Gisle Aas.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.