A Beginners Tutorial -------------------- $Revision$ - GET Queries The HttpRequest class can be used to execute any HTTP request method. The following example shows a simple GET request where a few query parameters are supplied. Additionally potential cookies will be read from and written to a file. setOptions( array( 'cookiestore' => '../cookies/google.txt', ) ); $r->setQueryData( array( 'q' => '+"pecl_http" -msg -cvs -list', 'hl' => 'de' ) ); // HttpRequest::send() returns an HttpMessage object // of type HttpMessage::RESPONSE or throws an exception try { print $r->send()->getBody(); } catch (HttpException $e) { print $e; } ?> - Multipart Posts The following example shows an multipart POST request, with two form fields and an image that's supposed to be uploaded to the server. It's a bad habit as well as common practice to issue a redirect after an received POST request, so we'll allow a redirect by enabling the redirect option. setOptions( array( 'cookies' => array('MyCookie' => 'has a value'), 'redirect' => true, ) ); // common form data $r->setPostFields( array( 'name' => 'Mike', 'mail' => 'mike@php.net', ) ); // add the file to post (form name, file name, file type) $r->addPostFile('image', 'profile.jpg', 'image/jpeg'); try { print $r->send()->getBody(); } catch (HttpException $e) { print $e; } ?> - Parallel Requests It's possible to execute several HttpRequests in parallel with the HttpRequestPool class. HttpRequests to send, do not need to perform the same request method, but can only be attached to one HttpRequestPool at the same time. attach(new HttpRequest('http://pear.php.net', HTTP_HEAD)); $p->attach(new HttpRequest('http://pecl.php.net', HTTP_HEAD)); } catch (HttpException $e) { print $e; exit; } try { $p->send(); // HttpRequestPool implements an iterator over attached HttpRequest objects foreach ($p as $r) { print "Checking ", $r->getUrl(), " reported ", $r->getResponseCode(), "\n"; } } catch (HttpException $e) { print $e; } ?> - Parallel Requests? You can use a more advanced approach by using the protected interface of the HttpRequestPool class. This allows you to perform some other tasks while the requests are executed. socketPerform(); $i++) { $i % 3 or print "."; if (!$this->socketSelect()) { throw new HttpException("Socket error!"); } } print "\nDone!\n"; } } try { foreach (new Pool as $r) { print "Checking ", $r->getUrl(), " reported ", $r->getResponseCode(), "\n"; } } catch (HttpException $ex) { print $e; } ?> - Cached Responses One of the main key features of HttpResponse is HTTP caching. HttpResponse will calculate an ETag based on the http.etag_mode INI setting as well as it will determine the last modification time of the sent entity. It uses those two indicators to decide if the cache entry on the client side is still valid and will emit an "304 Not Modified" response if applicable. - Bandwidth Throttling HttpResponse supports a basic throttling mechanism, which is enabled by setting a throttle delay and a buffer size. PHP will sleep the specified amount of seconds after each sent chunk of specified bytes. Exemplar Use Cases ------------------ - KISS XMLRPC Client namespace = $namespace; $this->request = new HttpRequest($url, HTTP_POST); $this->request->setContentType('text/xml'); } public function setOptions($options = array()) { return $this->request->setOptions($options); } public function addOptions($options) { return $this->request->addOptions($options); } public function __call($method, $params) { if ($this->namespace) { $method = $this->namespace .'.'. $method; } $this->request->setPostData(xmlrpc_encode_request($method, $params)); $response = $this->request->send(); if ($response->getResponseCode() != 200) { throw new Exception($response->getBody(), $response->getResponseCode()); } return xmlrpc_decode($response->getBody(), 'utf-8'); } public function getHistory() { return $this->request->getHistory(); } } ?> - Simple Feed Aggregator setDirectory($directory); } public function setDirectory($directory) { $this->directory = $directory; foreach (glob($this->directory .'/*.xml') as $feed) { $this->feeds[basename($feed, '.xml')] = filemtime($feed); } } public function url2name($url) { return preg_replace('/[^\w\.-]+/', '_', $url); } public function hasFeed($url) { return isset($this->feeds[$this->url2name($url)]); } public function addFeed($url) { $r = $this->setupRequest($url); $r->send(); $this->handleResponse($r); } public function addFeeds($urls) { $pool = new HttpRequestPool; foreach ($urls as $url) { $pool->attach($this->setupRequest($url)); } $pool->send(); foreach ($pool as $request) { $this->handleResponse($request); } } public function getFeed($url) { $this->addFeed($url); return $this->loadFeed($this->url2name($url)); } public function getFeeds($urls) { $feeds = array(); $this->addFeeds($urls); foreach ($urls as $url) { $feeds[] = $this->loadFeed($this->url2name($url)); } return $feeds; } protected function saveFeed($file, $contents) { if (file_put_contents($this->directory .'/'. $file .'.xml', $contents)) { $this->feeds[$file] = time(); } else { throw new Exception("Could not save feed contents to $file.xml"); } } protected function loadFeed($file) { if (isset($this->feeds[$file]) { if ($data = file_get_contents($this->directory .'/'. $file .'.xml')) { return $data; } else { throw new Exception("Could not load feed contents from $file.xml"); } } else { throw new Exception("Unknown feed/file $file.xml"); } } protected function setupRequest($url) { $r = new HttpRequest($url); $r->setOptions(array('redirect' => true)); $file = $this->url2name($url); if (isset($this->feeds[$file])) { $r->addOptions(array('lastmodified' => $this->feeds[$file])); } return $r; } protected function handleResponse(HttpRequest $r) { if ($r->getResponseCode() != 304) { if ($r->getResponseCode() != 200) { throw new Exception("Unexpected response code ". $r->getResponseCode()); } if (!strlen($body = $r->getResponseBody())) { throw new Exception("Received empty feed from ". $r->getUrl()); } $this->saveFeed($file, $body); } } } ?>