What's the simplest way to make a HTTP GET request in Perl?

Question

I have some code I've written in PHP for consuming our simple webservice, which I'd also like to provide in Perl for users who may prefer that language. What's the simplest method of making a HTTP request to do that? In PHP I can do it in one line with file_get_contents().

Here's the entire code I want to port to Perl:

/**
 * Makes a remote call to the our API, and returns the response
 * @param cmd {string} - command string ID
 * @param argsArray {array} - associative array of argument names and argument values
 * @return {array} - array of responses
 */
function callAPI( $cmd, $argsArray=array() )
{
   $apikey="MY_API_KEY";
   $secret="MY_SECRET";
   $apiurl="https://foobar.com/api";

   // timestamp this API was submitted (for security reasons)
   $epoch_time=time();

   //--- assemble argument array into string
   $query = "cmd=" .$cmd;
   foreach ($argsArray as $argName => $argValue) {
       $query .= "&" . $argName . "=" . urlencode($argValue);
   }
   $query .= "&key=". $apikey . "&time=" . $epoch_time;

   //--- make md5 hash of the query + secret string
   $md5 = md5($query . $secret);
   $url = $apiurl . "?" . $query . "&md5=" . $md5;

   //--- make simple HTTP GET request, put the server response into $response
   $response = file_get_contents($url);

   //--- convert "|" (pipe) delimited string to array
   $responseArray = explode("|", $response);
   return $responseArray;
}

score 80 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 25 '08 at 17:59

80

LWP::Simple:

use LWP::Simple;
$contents = get("http://YOUR_URL_HERE");

answered Sep 25 '08 at 17:59

Kevin

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so...we've got four responses mentioning LWP::Simple, I guess that's the one to use – davr Sep 25 '08 at 18:03
2

For static strings like 'http://URL', it's best to use single quotes to save perl the work of looking for things to interpolate. – AndrewJFord Sep 25 '08 at 19:27
10

For static strings, there's no _real_ overhead with double quotes. The reason to use single quotes is to make it clear to the next programmer that they don't need to look for interpolations in the code. – Dave Rolsky Sep 25 '08 at 19:31

score 20 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 25 '08 at 18:02

20

LWP::Simple has the function you're looking for.

use LWP::Simple;
$content = get($url);
die "Can't GET $url" if (! defined $content);

answered Sep 25 '08 at 18:02

Barry Brown

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score 6 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 25 '08 at 17:59

6

Take a look at LWP::Simple. For more involved queries, there's even a book about it.

answered Sep 25 '08 at 17:59

bmdhacks

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score 6 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 06 '14 at 04:47

6

I would use the LWP::Simple module.

edited Apr 06 '14 at 04:47

szabgab

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answered Sep 25 '08 at 17:59

AndrewJFord

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score 3 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 08 '14 at 14:19

3

Try the HTTP::Request module. Instances of this class are usually passed to the request() method of an LWP::UserAgent object.

edited Aug 08 '14 at 14:19

Dave Horner

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answered Sep 25 '08 at 18:00

coppro

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score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 20 '13 at 04:23

Mojo::UserAgent is a great option too!

  use Mojo::UserAgent;
  my $ua = Mojo::UserAgent->new;

  # Say hello to the Unicode snowman with "Do Not Track" header
  say $ua->get('www.☃.net?hello=there' => {DNT => 1})->res->body;

  # Form POST with exception handling
  my $tx = $ua->post('https://metacpan.org/search' => form => {q => 'mojo'});
  if (my $res = $tx->success) { say $res->body }
  else {
    my ($err, $code) = $tx->error;
    say $code ? "$code response: $err" : "Connection error: $err";
  }

  # Quick JSON API request with Basic authentication
  say $ua->get('https://sri:s3cret@example.com/search.json?q=perl')
    ->res->json('/results/0/title');

  # Extract data from HTML and XML resources
  say $ua->get('www.perl.org')->res->dom->html->head->title->text;`

Samples direct from CPAN page. I used this when I couldn 't get LWP::Simple to work on my machine.

score 1 · Answer 7 · edited Jun 26 '19 at 11:45

1

If it's in Unix and if LWP::Simple isn't installed, you can try:

my $content = `GET "http://trackMyPhones.com/"`;

edited Jun 26 '19 at 11:45

Peter Mortensen

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answered Mar 20 '15 at 09:23

Srihari Karanth

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What is "GET"? It's not installed and doesn't work on my Ubuntu 14.04 Linux. – matt freake Sep 23 '15 at 12:06
1

`GET` is a utility installed with the `LWP` Perl library. – reinierpost Sep 02 '16 at 16:14

score 1 · Answer 8 · edited Jun 26 '19 at 11:48

I think what Srihari might be referencing is Wget, but I would actually recommend (again, on *nix without LWP::Simple) to use cURL:

$ my $content = `curl -s "http://google.com"`;
<HTML><HEAD><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<TITLE>301 Moved</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>
<H1>301 Moved</H1>
The document has moved
<A HREF="http://www.google.com/">here</A>.
</BODY></HTML>

The -s flag tells curl to be silent. Otherwise, you get curl's progress bar output on standard error every time.

What's the simplest way to make a HTTP GET request in Perl?

8 Answers8

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