http::message(3)

NAME

HTTP::Message - Class encapsulating HTTP messages

SYNOPSIS

package HTTP::Request;  # or HTTP::Response
require HTTP::Message;
@ISA=qw(HTTP::Message);

DESCRIPTION

An "HTTP::Message" object contains some headers and a con
tent (body). The class is abstract, i.e. it only used as
a base class for "HTTP::Request" and "HTTP::Response" and
should never instantiated as itself.

The following methods are available:

$mess = HTTP::Message->new

This is the object constructor. It should only be
called internally by this library. External code
should construct "HTTP::Request" or "HTTP::Response"
objects.

$mess->clone()

Returns a copy of the object.

$mess->protocol([$proto])

Sets the HTTP protocol used for the message. The pro_
tocol() is a string like "HTTP/1.0" or "HTTP/1.1".

$mess->content([$content])

The content() method sets the content if an argument is given. If no argument is given the content is not
touched. In either case the previous content is
returned.

$mess->add_content($data)

The add_content() methods appends more data to the end of the current content buffer.

$mess->content_ref

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: o

o

${$res->content_ref} =~ s/g

;

$mess->headers;

Return the embedded HTTP::Headers object.

$mess->headers_as_string([$endl])

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 :-)

All unknown "HTTP::Message" methods 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->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 1995-2001 Gisle Aas.

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

libwww-perl-5.65 2001-11-15 HTTP::Message(3)