HTTP::Message(3pm) User Contributed Perl Documentation HTTP::Message(3pm)NAMEHTTP::Message - HTTP style message (base class)
SYNOPSIS
use base 'HTTP::Message';
DESCRIPTION
An "HTTP::Message" object contains some headers and a content body.
The following methods are available:
$mess = HTTP::Message->new
$mess = HTTP::Message->new( $headers )
$mess = HTTP::Message->new( $headers, $content )
This constructs a new message object. Normally you would want
construct "HTTP::Request" or "HTTP::Response" objects instead.
The optional $header argument should be a reference to an
"HTTP::Headers" object or a plain array reference of key/value
pairs. If an "HTTP::Headers" object is provided then a copy of it
will be embedded into the constructed message, i.e. it will not be
owned and can be modified afterwards without affecting the message.
The optional $content argument should be a string of bytes.
$mess = HTTP::Message->parse( $str )
This constructs a new message object by parsing the given string.
$mess->headers
Returns the embedded "HTTP::Headers" object.
$mess->headers_as_string
$mess->headers_as_string( $eol )
Call the as_string() method for the headers in the message. This
will be the same as
$mess->headers->as_string
but it will make your program a whole character shorter :-)
$mess->content
$mess->content( $bytes )
The content() method sets the raw content if an argument is given.
If no argument is given the content is not touched. In either case
the original raw content is returned.
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.
$mess->add_content( $bytes )
The add_content() methods appends more data bytes to the end of the
current content buffer.
$mess->add_content_utf8( $string )
The add_content_utf8() method appends the UTF-8 bytes representing
the string to the end of the current content buffer.
$mess->content_ref
$mess->content_ref( \$bytes )
The content_ref() method will return a reference to content buffer
string. It can be more efficient to access the content this way if
the content is huge, and it can even be used for direct
manipulation of the content, for instance:
${$res->content_ref} =~ s/\bfoo\b/bar/g;
This example would modify the content buffer in-place.
If an argument is passed it will setup the content to reference
some external source. The content() and add_content() methods will
automatically dereference scalar references passed this way. For
other references content() will return the reference itself and
add_content() will refuse to do anything.
$mess->content_charset
This returns the charset used by the content in the message. The
charset is either found as the charset attribute of the
"Content-Type" header or by guessing.
See
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/charset.html#spec-char-encoding>
for details about how charset is determined.
$mess->decoded_content( %options )
Returns the content with any "Content-Encoding" undone and the raw
content encoded to perl's Unicode strings. If the
"Content-Encoding" or "charset" of the message is unknown this
method will fail by returning "undef".
The following options can be specified.
"charset"
This override the charset parameter for text content. The
value "none" can used to suppress decoding of the charset.
"default_charset"
This override the default charset guessed by content_charset()
or if that fails "ISO-8859-1".
"alt_charset"
If decoding fails because the charset specified in the Content-
Type header isn't recognized by Perl's Encode module, then try
decoding using this charset instead of failing. The
"alt_charset" might be specified as "none" to simply return the
string without any decoding of charset as alternative.
"charset_strict"
Abort decoding if malformed characters is found in the content.
By default you get the substitution character ("\x{FFFD}") in
place of malformed characters.
"raise_error"
If TRUE then raise an exception if not able to decode content.
Reason might be that the specified "Content-Encoding" or
"charset" is not supported. If this option is FALSE, then
decoded_content() will return "undef" on errors, but will still
set $@.
"ref"
If TRUE then a reference to decoded content is returned. This
might be more efficient in cases where the decoded content is
identical to the raw content as no data copying is required in
this case.
$mess->decodable
HTTP::Message::decodable()
This returns the encoding identifiers that decoded_content() can
process. In scalar context returns a comma separated string of
identifiers.
This value is suitable for initializing the "Accept-Encoding"
request header field.
$mess->decode
This method tries to replace the content of the message with the
decoded version and removes the "Content-Encoding" header. Returns
TRUE if successful and FALSE if not.
If the message does not have a "Content-Encoding" header this
method does nothing and returns TRUE.
Note that the content of the message is still bytes after this
method has been called and you still need to call decoded_content()
if you want to process its content as a string.
$mess->encode( $encoding, ... )
Apply the given encodings to the content of the message. Returns
TRUE if successful. The "identity" (non-)encoding is always
supported; other currently supported encodings, subject to
availability of required additional modules, are "gzip", "deflate",
"x-bzip2" and "base64".
A successful call to this function will set the "Content-Encoding"
header.
Note that "multipart/*" or "message/*" messages can't be encoded
and this method will croak if you try.
$mess->parts
$mess->parts( @parts )
$mess->parts( \@parts )
Messages can be composite, i.e. contain other messages. The
composite messages have a content type of "multipart/*" or
"message/*". This method give access to the contained messages.
The argumentless form will return a list of "HTTP::Message"
objects. If the content type of $msg is not "multipart/*" or
"message/*" then this will return the empty list. In scalar
context only the first object is returned. The returned message
parts should be regarded as read-only (future versions of this
library might make it possible to modify the parent by modifying
the parts).
If the content type of $msg is "message/*" then there will only be
one part returned.
If the content type is "message/http", then the return value will
be either an "HTTP::Request" or an "HTTP::Response" object.
If an @parts argument is given, then the content of the message
will be modified. The array reference form is provided so that an
empty list can be provided. The @parts array should contain
"HTTP::Message" objects. The @parts objects are owned by $mess
after this call and should not be modified or made part of other
messages.
When updating the message with this method and the old content type
of $mess is not "multipart/*" or "message/*", then the content type
is set to "multipart/mixed" and all other content headers are
cleared.
This method will croak if the content type is "message/*" and more
than one part is provided.
$mess->add_part( $part )
This will add a part to a message. The $part argument should be
another "HTTP::Message" object. If the previous content type of
$mess is not "multipart/*" then the old content (together with all
content headers) will be made part #1 and the content type made
"multipart/mixed" before the new part is added. The $part object
is owned by $mess after this call and should not be modified or
made part of other messages.
There is no return value.
$mess->clear
Will clear the headers and set the content to the empty string.
There is no return value
$mess->protocol
$mess->protocol( $proto )
Sets the HTTP protocol used for the message. The protocol() is a
string like "HTTP/1.0" or "HTTP/1.1".
$mess->clone
Returns a copy of the message object.
$mess->as_string
$mess->as_string( $eol )
Returns the message formatted as a single string.
The optional $eol parameter specifies the line ending sequence to
use. The default is "\n". If no $eol is given then as_string will
ensure that the returned string is newline terminated (even when
the message content is not). No extra newline is appended if an
explicit $eol is passed.
$mess->dump( %opt )
Returns the message formatted as a string. In void context print
the string.
This differs from "$mess->as_string" in that it escapes the bytes
of the content so that it's safe to print them and it limits how
much content to print. The escapes syntax used is the same as for
Perl's double quoted strings. If there is no content the string
"(no content)" is shown in its place.
Options to influence the output can be passed as key/value pairs.
The following options are recognized:
maxlength => $num
How much of the content to show. The default is 512. Set this
to 0 for unlimited.
If the content is longer then the string is chopped at the
limit and the string "...\n(### more bytes not shown)"
appended.
prefix => $str
A string that will be prefixed to each line of the dump.
All methods unknown to "HTTP::Message" itself are delegated to the
"HTTP::Headers" object that is part of every message. This allows
convenient access to these methods. Refer to HTTP::Headers for details
of these methods:
$mess->header( $field => $val )
$mess->push_header( $field => $val )
$mess->init_header( $field => $val )
$mess->remove_header( $field )
$mess->remove_content_headers
$mess->header_field_names
$mess->scan( \&doit )
$mess->date
$mess->expires
$mess->if_modified_since
$mess->if_unmodified_since
$mess->last_modified
$mess->content_type
$mess->content_encoding
$mess->content_length
$mess->content_language
$mess->title
$mess->user_agent
$mess->server
$mess->from
$mess->referer
$mess->www_authenticate
$mess->authorization
$mess->proxy_authorization
$mess->authorization_basic
$mess->proxy_authorization_basic
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.
perl v5.10.1 2010-05-05 HTTP::Message(3pm)
