NAME

Furl - Lightning-fast URL fetcher

SYNOPSIS

    use Furl;

    my $furl = Furl->new(
        agent   => 'MyGreatUA/2.0',
        timeout => 10,
    );

    my $res = $furl->get('http://example.com/');
    die $res->status_line unless $res->is_success;
    print $res->content;

    my $res = $furl->post(
        'http://example.com/', # URL
        [...],                 # headers
        [ foo => 'bar' ],      # form data (HashRef/FileHandle are also okay)
    );

    # Accept-Encoding is supported but optional
    $furl = Furl->new(
        headers => [ 'Accept-Encoding' => 'gzip' ],
    );
    my $body = $furl->get('http://example.com/some/compressed');

DESCRIPTION

Furl is yet another HTTP client library. LWP is the de facto standard HTTP client for Perl 5, but it is too slow for some critical jobs, and too complex for weekend hacking. Furl resolves these issues. Enjoy it!

INTERFACE

Class Methods

Furl->new(%args | \%args) :Furl

Creates and returns a new Furl client with %args. Dies on errors.

%args might be:

agent :Str = "Furl/$VERSION"
timeout :Int = 10
max_redirects :Int = 7
capture_request :Bool = false

If this parameter is true, Furl::HTTP captures raw request string. You can get it by $res->captured_req_headers and $res->captured_req_content.

proxy :Str
no_proxy :Str
headers :ArrayRef

(EXPERIMENTAL)

An instance of HTTP::CookieJar or equivalent class that supports the add and cookie_header methods

Instance Methods

$furl->request([$request,] %args) :Furl::Response

Sends an HTTP request to a specified URL and returns a instance of Furl::Response.

%args might be:

scheme :Str = "http"

Protocol scheme. May be http or https.

host :Str

Server host to connect.

You must specify at least host or url.

port :Int = 80

Server port to connect. The default is 80 on scheme => 'http', or 443 on scheme => 'https'.

path_query :Str = "/"

Path and query to request.

url :Str

URL to request.

You can use url instead of scheme, host, port and path_query.

headers :ArrayRef

HTTP request headers. e.g. headers => [ 'Accept-Encoding' => 'gzip' ].

content : Str | ArrayRef[Str] | HashRef[Str] | FileHandle

Content to request.

If the number of arguments is an odd number, this method assumes that the first argument is an instance of HTTP::Request. Remaining arguments can be any of the previously describe values (but currently there's no way to really utilize them, so don't use it)

    my $req = HTTP::Request->new(...);
    my $res = $furl->request($req);

You can also specify an object other than HTTP::Request (e.g. Furl::Request), but the object must implement the following methods:

uri
method
content
headers

These must return the same type of values as their counterparts in HTTP::Request.

You must encode all the queries or this method will die, saying Wide character in ....

$furl->get($url :Str, $headers :ArrayRef[Str] )

This is an easy-to-use alias to request(), sending the GET method.

$furl->head($url :Str, $headers :ArrayRef[Str] )

This is an easy-to-use alias to request(), sending the HEAD method.

$furl->post($url :Str, $headers :ArrayRef[Str], $content :Any)

This is an easy-to-use alias to request(), sending the POST method.

$furl->put($url :Str, $headers :ArrayRef[Str], $content :Any)

This is an easy-to-use alias to request(), sending the PUT method.

$furl->delete($url :Str, $headers :ArrayRef[Str] )

This is an easy-to-use alias to request(), sending the DELETE method.

$furl->env_proxy()

Loads proxy settings from $ENV{HTTP_PROXY} and $ENV{NO_PROXY}.

TIPS

IO::Socket::SSL preloading

Furl interprets the timeout argument as the maximum time the module is permitted to spend before returning an error.

The module also lazy-loads IO::Socket::SSL when an HTTPS request is being issued for the first time. Loading the module usually takes ~0.1 seconds.

The time spent for loading the SSL module may become an issue in case you want to impose a very small timeout value for connection establishment. In such case, users are advised to preload the SSL module explicitly.

FAQ

Does Furl depends on XS modules?

No. Although some optional features require XS modules, basic features are available without XS modules.

Note that Furl requires HTTP::Parser::XS, which seems an XS module but includes a pure Perl backend, HTTP::Parser::XS::PP.

I need more speed.

See Furl::HTTP, which provides the low level interface of Furl. It is faster than Furl.pm since Furl::HTTP does not create response objects.

Furl does not directly support the cookie_jar option available in LWP. You can use HTTP::Cookies, HTTP::Request, HTTP::Response like following.

    my $f = Furl->new();
    my $cookies = HTTP::Cookies->new();
    my $req = HTTP::Request->new(...);
    $cookies->add_cookie_header($req);
    my $res = $f->request($req)->as_http_response;
    $res->request($req);
    $cookies->extract_cookies($res);
    # and use $res.
How do you limit the response content length?

You can limit the content length by callback function.

    my $f = Furl->new();
    my $content = '';
    my $limit = 1_000_000;
    my %special_headers = ('content-length' => undef);
    my $res = $f->request(
        method          => 'GET',
        url             => $url,
        special_headers => \%special_headers,
        write_code      => sub {
            my ( $status, $msg, $headers, $buf ) = @_;
            if (($special_headers{'content-length'}||0) > $limit || length($content) > $limit) {
                die "over limit: $limit";
            }
            $content .= $buf;
        }
    );
How do you display the progress bar?
    my $bar = Term::ProgressBar->new({count => 1024, ETA => 'linear'});
    $bar->minor(0);
    $bar->max_update_rate(1);

    my $f = Furl->new();
    my $content = '';
    my %special_headers = ('content-length' => undef);;
    my $did_set_target = 0;
    my $received_size = 0;
    my $next_update  = 0;
    $f->request(
        method          => 'GET',
        url             => $url,
        special_headers => \%special_headers,
        write_code      => sub {
            my ( $status, $msg, $headers, $buf ) = @_;
            unless ($did_set_target) {
                if ( my $cl = $special_headers{'content-length'} ) {
                    $bar->target($cl);
                    $did_set_target++;
                }
                else {
                    $bar->target( $received_size + 2 * length($buf) );
                }
            }
            $received_size += length($buf);
            $content .= $buf;
            $next_update = $bar->update($received_size)
            if $received_size >= $next_update;
        }
    );
HTTPS requests claims warnings!

When you make https requests, IO::Socket::SSL may complain about it like:

    *******************************************************************
     Using the default of SSL_verify_mode of SSL_VERIFY_NONE for client
     is depreciated! Please set SSL_verify_mode to SSL_VERIFY_PEER
     together with SSL_ca_file|SSL_ca_path for verification.
     If you really don't want to verify the certificate and keep the
     connection open to Man-In-The-Middle attacks please set
     SSL_verify_mode explicitly to SSL_VERIFY_NONE in your application.
    *******************************************************************

You should set SSL_verify_mode explicitly with Furl's ssl_opts.

    use IO::Socket::SSL;

    my $ua = Furl->new(
        ssl_opts => {
            SSL_verify_mode => SSL_VERIFY_PEER(),
        },
    );

See IO::Socket::SSL for details.

AUTHOR

Tokuhiro Matsuno <tokuhirom@gmail.com>

Fuji, Goro (gfx)

THANKS TO

Kazuho Oku

mala

mattn

lestrrat

walf443

lestrrat

audreyt

SEE ALSO

LWP

IO::Socket::SSL

Furl::HTTP

Furl::Response

LICENSE

Copyright (C) Tokuhiro Matsuno.

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