NAME

HTTP::Request::FromTemplate - Create HTTP requests from templates

SYNOPSIS

  use HTTP::Request::FromTemplate;
  use LWP::UserAgent;

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

  # A request, snarfed from your network monitor logs:
  my $template = <<TEMPLATE
  POST http://[% host %][% path %][% query %] HTTP/1.1
  Host: [% host %]
  Connection: keep-alive
  Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
  Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
  Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
  User-Agent: QuickTime (qtver=5.0.2;os=Windows NT 5.1)
  Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
  Keep-Alive: 300
  Referer: http://[% host %][% path %][% query %]

  TEMPLATE
  my $t = HTTP::Request::FromTemplate->new(template => $template);
  my $req = $t->process({ 'host' => 'apple.com',
                          'path' => '/',
                          'query' => '?',
                           });
  my $response = $ua->request($request); # replay the request

ABSTRACT

I wanted this for a long time already. It makes it very convenient to just paste a logged session from the http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/ into a template file and be able to faithfully replay a request or to parametrize it without needing to manually compare what is sent against what I want.

PREDEFINED TEMPLATE PARAMETERS

There is one predefined/magic template parameter. content_length will be set to the length of the content (after the template has been filled out) unless it was passed in via the template parameters.

FEEDBACK

This is one of the modules that I created because the idea hit me as crazy but useful. So if you use the module, please tell me what enhancements you'd like, or where it falls short of your expectations.

KNOWN BUGS

• While this module tries to faithfully replicate a HTTP request from a template, it uses HTTP::Request. This means that the order of the headers will be as HTTP::Request thinks and not as your template prescribes.

• Only rudimentary testing has been done.

• The test suite uses Test::Base, which uses Spiffy. I know I will rot in hell for that, but it was so convenient at the time.

  Patches are welcome.

REPORTING BUGS

If you find bugs, please report them via http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=HTTP-Request-FromTemplate or, preferrably via mail to bug-HTTP-Request-FromTemplate@rt.cpan.org.

AUTHOR

Max Maischein (corion@cpan.org)

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2005 Max Maischein. All Rights Reserved.

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

SEE ALSO

LWP,HTTP::Request,Mozilla Live HTTP Headers