1HTTP::Message(3)      User Contributed Perl Documentation     HTTP::Message(3)
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NAME

6       HTTP::Message - HTTP style message (base class)
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VERSION

9       version 6.22
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SYNOPSIS

12        use base 'HTTP::Message';
13

DESCRIPTION

15       An "HTTP::Message" object contains some headers and a content body.
16       The following methods are available:
17
18       $mess = HTTP::Message->new
19       $mess = HTTP::Message->new( $headers )
20       $mess = HTTP::Message->new( $headers, $content )
21           This constructs a new message object.  Normally you would want
22           construct "HTTP::Request" or "HTTP::Response" objects instead.
23
24           The optional $header argument should be a reference to an
25           "HTTP::Headers" object or a plain array reference of key/value
26           pairs.  If an "HTTP::Headers" object is provided then a copy of it
27           will be embedded into the constructed message, i.e. it will not be
28           owned and can be modified afterwards without affecting the message.
29
30           The optional $content argument should be a string of bytes.
31
32       $mess = HTTP::Message->parse( $str )
33           This constructs a new message object by parsing the given string.
34
35       $mess->headers
36           Returns the embedded "HTTP::Headers" object.
37
38       $mess->headers_as_string
39       $mess->headers_as_string( $eol )
40           Call the as_string() method for the headers in the message.  This
41           will be the same as
42
43               $mess->headers->as_string
44
45           but it will make your program a whole character shorter :-)
46
47       $mess->content
48       $mess->content( $bytes )
49           The content() method sets the raw content if an argument is given.
50           If no argument is given the content is not touched.  In either case
51           the original raw content is returned.
52
53           If the "undef" argument is given, the content is reset to its
54           default value, which is an empty string.
55
56           Note that the content should be a string of bytes.  Strings in perl
57           can contain characters outside the range of a byte.  The "Encode"
58           module can be used to turn such strings into a string of bytes.
59
60       $mess->add_content( $bytes )
61           The add_content() methods appends more data bytes to the end of the
62           current content buffer.
63
64       $mess->add_content_utf8( $string )
65           The add_content_utf8() method appends the UTF-8 bytes representing
66           the string to the end of the current content buffer.
67
68       $mess->content_ref
69       $mess->content_ref( \$bytes )
70           The content_ref() method will return a reference to content buffer
71           string.  It can be more efficient to access the content this way if
72           the content is huge, and it can even be used for direct
73           manipulation of the content, for instance:
74
75             ${$res->content_ref} =~ s/\bfoo\b/bar/g;
76
77           This example would modify the content buffer in-place.
78
79           If an argument is passed it will setup the content to reference
80           some external source.  The content() and add_content() methods will
81           automatically dereference scalar references passed this way.  For
82           other references content() will return the reference itself and
83           add_content() will refuse to do anything.
84
85       $mess->content_charset
86           This returns the charset used by the content in the message.  The
87           charset is either found as the charset attribute of the
88           "Content-Type" header or by guessing.
89
90           See
91           <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/charset.html#spec-char-encoding>
92           for details about how charset is determined.
93
94       $mess->decoded_content( %options )
95           Returns the content with any "Content-Encoding" undone and for
96           textual content the raw content encoded to Perl's Unicode strings.
97           If the "Content-Encoding" or "charset" of the message is unknown
98           this method will fail by returning "undef".
99
100           The following options can be specified.
101
102           "charset"
103               This override the charset parameter for text content.  The
104               value "none" can used to suppress decoding of the charset.
105
106           "default_charset"
107               This override the default charset guessed by content_charset()
108               or if that fails "ISO-8859-1".
109
110           "alt_charset"
111               If decoding fails because the charset specified in the Content-
112               Type header isn't recognized by Perl's Encode module, then try
113               decoding using this charset instead of failing.  The
114               "alt_charset" might be specified as "none" to simply return the
115               string without any decoding of charset as alternative.
116
117           "charset_strict"
118               Abort decoding if malformed characters is found in the content.
119               By default you get the substitution character ("\x{FFFD}") in
120               place of malformed characters.
121
122           "raise_error"
123               If TRUE then raise an exception if not able to decode content.
124               Reason might be that the specified "Content-Encoding" or
125               "charset" is not supported.  If this option is FALSE, then
126               decoded_content() will return "undef" on errors, but will still
127               set $@.
128
129           "ref"
130               If TRUE then a reference to decoded content is returned.  This
131               might be more efficient in cases where the decoded content is
132               identical to the raw content as no data copying is required in
133               this case.
134
135       $mess->decodable
136       HTTP::Message::decodable()
137           This returns the encoding identifiers that decoded_content() can
138           process.  In scalar context returns a comma separated string of
139           identifiers.
140
141           This value is suitable for initializing the "Accept-Encoding"
142           request header field.
143
144       $mess->decode
145           This method tries to replace the content of the message with the
146           decoded version and removes the "Content-Encoding" header.  Returns
147           TRUE if successful and FALSE if not.
148
149           If the message does not have a "Content-Encoding" header this
150           method does nothing and returns TRUE.
151
152           Note that the content of the message is still bytes after this
153           method has been called and you still need to call decoded_content()
154           if you want to process its content as a string.
155
156       $mess->encode( $encoding, ... )
157           Apply the given encodings to the content of the message.  Returns
158           TRUE if successful. The "identity" (non-)encoding is always
159           supported; other currently supported encodings, subject to
160           availability of required additional modules, are "gzip", "deflate",
161           "x-bzip2" and "base64".
162
163           A successful call to this function will set the "Content-Encoding"
164           header.
165
166           Note that "multipart/*" or "message/*" messages can't be encoded
167           and this method will croak if you try.
168
169       $mess->parts
170       $mess->parts( @parts )
171       $mess->parts( \@parts )
172           Messages can be composite, i.e. contain other messages.  The
173           composite messages have a content type of "multipart/*" or
174           "message/*".  This method give access to the contained messages.
175
176           The argumentless form will return a list of "HTTP::Message"
177           objects.  If the content type of $msg is not "multipart/*" or
178           "message/*" then this will return the empty list.  In scalar
179           context only the first object is returned.  The returned message
180           parts should be regarded as read-only (future versions of this
181           library might make it possible to modify the parent by modifying
182           the parts).
183
184           If the content type of $msg is "message/*" then there will only be
185           one part returned.
186
187           If the content type is "message/http", then the return value will
188           be either an "HTTP::Request" or an "HTTP::Response" object.
189
190           If a @parts argument is given, then the content of the message will
191           be modified. The array reference form is provided so that an empty
192           list can be provided.  The @parts array should contain
193           "HTTP::Message" objects.  The @parts objects are owned by $mess
194           after this call and should not be modified or made part of other
195           messages.
196
197           When updating the message with this method and the old content type
198           of $mess is not "multipart/*" or "message/*", then the content type
199           is set to "multipart/mixed" and all other content headers are
200           cleared.
201
202           This method will croak if the content type is "message/*" and more
203           than one part is provided.
204
205       $mess->add_part( $part )
206           This will add a part to a message.  The $part argument should be
207           another "HTTP::Message" object.  If the previous content type of
208           $mess is not "multipart/*" then the old content (together with all
209           content headers) will be made part #1 and the content type made
210           "multipart/mixed" before the new part is added.  The $part object
211           is owned by $mess after this call and should not be modified or
212           made part of other messages.
213
214           There is no return value.
215
216       $mess->clear
217           Will clear the headers and set the content to the empty string.
218           There is no return value
219
220       $mess->protocol
221       $mess->protocol( $proto )
222           Sets the HTTP protocol used for the message.  The protocol() is a
223           string like "HTTP/1.0" or "HTTP/1.1".
224
225       $mess->clone
226           Returns a copy of the message object.
227
228       $mess->as_string
229       $mess->as_string( $eol )
230           Returns the message formatted as a single string.
231
232           The optional $eol parameter specifies the line ending sequence to
233           use.  The default is "\n".  If no $eol is given then as_string will
234           ensure that the returned string is newline terminated (even when
235           the message content is not).  No extra newline is appended if an
236           explicit $eol is passed.
237
238       $mess->dump( %opt )
239           Returns the message formatted as a string.  In void context print
240           the string.
241
242           This differs from "$mess->as_string" in that it escapes the bytes
243           of the content so that it's safe to print them and it limits how
244           much content to print.  The escapes syntax used is the same as for
245           Perl's double quoted strings.  If there is no content the string
246           "(no content)" is shown in its place.
247
248           Options to influence the output can be passed as key/value pairs.
249           The following options are recognized:
250
251           maxlength => $num
252               How much of the content to show.  The default is 512.  Set this
253               to 0 for unlimited.
254
255               If the content is longer then the string is chopped at the
256               limit and the string "...\n(### more bytes not shown)"
257               appended.
258
259           no_content => $str
260               Replaces the "(no content)" marker.
261
262           prefix => $str
263               A string that will be prefixed to each line of the dump.
264
265       All methods unknown to "HTTP::Message" itself are delegated to the
266       "HTTP::Headers" object that is part of every message.  This allows
267       convenient access to these methods.  Refer to HTTP::Headers for details
268       of these methods:
269
270           $mess->header( $field => $val )
271           $mess->push_header( $field => $val )
272           $mess->init_header( $field => $val )
273           $mess->remove_header( $field )
274           $mess->remove_content_headers
275           $mess->header_field_names
276           $mess->scan( \&doit )
277
278           $mess->date
279           $mess->expires
280           $mess->if_modified_since
281           $mess->if_unmodified_since
282           $mess->last_modified
283           $mess->content_type
284           $mess->content_encoding
285           $mess->content_length
286           $mess->content_language
287           $mess->title
288           $mess->user_agent
289           $mess->server
290           $mess->from
291           $mess->referer
292           $mess->www_authenticate
293           $mess->authorization
294           $mess->proxy_authorization
295           $mess->authorization_basic
296           $mess->proxy_authorization_basic
297

AUTHOR

299       Gisle Aas <gisle@activestate.com>
300
302       This software is copyright (c) 1994-2017 by Gisle Aas.
303
304       This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
305       the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
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309perl v5.30.1                      2020-02-25                  HTTP::Message(3)
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