HTTP headers for posting data

[Dave Cragg]

At 10:16 pm +0200 10/6/03, Andre Rombauts wrote:
>Thanks Dave: working...!
>But anyway can someone give an example of HTTPHeaders usage?
>


When you use get or post with an http url, the libUrl library script 
constructs a minimal set of headers. For example, if you use the 
following command:

   get url "http://192.168.123.7/cgi-bin/echo3.mt"


this is the request that is sent to the http server:

GET /cgi-bin/echo3.mt HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.123.7
User-Agent: Revolution (MacOS)

The first line is the "request" line. The 2nd and 3rd are the headers.

If you wanted to change the User-Agent header to your own custom 
name, you could do this:

set the httpHeaders to "User-Agent: DavesApp 1.0"
get url "http://192.168.123.7/cgi-bin/echo3.mt"

and the request sent to the server will look like this:

GET /cgi-bin/echo3.mt HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.123.7
User-Agent: DavesApp 1.0

Setting multiple header lines is done in one go like this:

put  "User-Agent: DavesApp 1.0" into tHeaders
put return & "Connection: close" after tHeaders
set the httpHeaders to tHeaders
get url "http://192.168.123.7/cgi-bin/echo3.mt"

The request will look like this:

GET /cgi-bin/echo3.mt HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.123.7
User-Agent: DavesApp 1.0
Connection: close

(The Connection header asks the server to close the connection 
immediately after the respone has been sent.)

The standard http headers are described in the http rfc.

<http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html>

In addition, you can create custom headers which you can use in 
custom web applications. A CGI script on the server can respond 
depending on the value of a particular header.

For example:

set the httpheaders to "MyAction: newSessionKey"

This would have no effect unless the server or server script were 
specifically looking for this header.

Cheers
Dave