Whitebeam Object Definition

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Whitebeam Object Definition

HttpRequest Object Description

This is a simple class that allows a Whitebeam application to send out HTTP requests to another server on the network - and then process the output from that server either textually or via the rich XML processing environment offered by Whitebeam.

More details of this feature can be found in a tutorial dealing with this specific topic.

This functionality allows applications to access the wealth of online resources available on the Internet, Intranet or Extranet. Examples of where this functionality has been used include:

Accessing online data-sources. Such sources may have a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) or may simply be XML or HTML documents
Shopping cart handshaking - for example PayPal requires transactions to be acknowledged via an HTTPS post back to PayPal servers
Reading existing web pages and reskinning them on the fly. For example where a company has a legacy web-site comprising a lot of static pages. A 'quick' way of changing the corporate image for such a site is to run each page request through a Whitebeam Pattern Page that performs the look and feel translation.
Adding security to an existing insecure application. For example where you want to make an Intranet application available to authorised people over the Internet. Leave the old application behind a firewall and use the Whitebeam security architecture to encapsulate each page in a secure wrapper.

The HttpRequest class is a fairly simple basic access class that allows raw HTTP requests to be made across a network. Using this class you can build more sophisticated classes to encapsulate higher level functionality such as SOAP access.

Methods

HttpRequest.doRequest()	Send a request to a remote HTTP server.
HttpRequest.toString()	Return the 'body' property of this HttpRequest.

Aggregate Types

HttpRequest.HttpHeader

An HTTP header comprising a name and a value pair.

Object Properties

Name	Type/Value	Range/Length	Description
url	string		Optional. Specify the target URL that you wish to retrieve. If you use the 'URL' parameter the 'protocol', 'host', 'port' and 'path' attributes are ignored. Format is protocol://[username:pwd@]server[:port]//path
protocol	string		Optional, default = HTTP Currently 'HTTP' or 'HTTPS' (case insensitive)
host	string		Optional. IP address or DNS name of server. Required if 'url' not specified.
port	number		Optional, default = 80 IP port number.
path	string		Required. Virtual path name of the resource to access.
method	string		Optional, default = GET "GET", "POST" etc.
proxy	string		Optional. Address (name/ip address:port) of an intermediate proxy device.
proxyType	string		Optional, default = http String identifying the type of the optional proxy. Ignored unless 'proxy' is defined. May be 'http', 'socks4', 'socks4a' or 'socks5' (case insensitive)
maxRedirects	number		Optional, default = 0 By default HttpRequest makes a single request - returning everything to the caller. If you set 'maxRedirects' to a number greater than zero, Whitebeam will automatically follow redirect headers fom the origin server.
autoRefer	bool		Optional, default = true If 'maxRedirects' is greater than zero, when Whitebeam follows a redirect it automatically sets the referer header to the previous URL.
postdata	string		Required. The textual data to send as post-data to the server.
headers	array of struct HttpRequest.HttpHeaders	see definition	Required. Set of headers to send to the server.
res	number		Optional. This property will not exist until an HTTP request is made. Subsequently the property will hold either the HTTP response code returned from the remote server or the value -1 - indicating the server could not be contacted.
responseHeaders	struct HttpRequest.HttpHeader	see definition	Optional. Set of HTTP headers in the response.
body	string		Optional. After a successful request to a remote sever this property will contain the body of the HTTP response.
binary	string		Optional. If set to 'true' then the 'body' field will be a binary object containing the raw data returned in the request. This is useful in those cases where, for example, the HTTP request is to retieve binary data such as image.
timeout	number		Optional. How long to wait before a request 'times out'.
elapsed	number		Optional. Defined by HttpRequest after a successful doRequest() call. Contains the time in milli-seconds taken to service the request.
sslVerifyPeer	bool		Optional, default = false If set to 'true' and the protocol is HTTPS - Whitebeam checks the authenticity of the origin servers certificate before completing the request. If the certificate is invaid the request aborts.
sslVerifyHost	bool		Optional, default = false Implies sslVerifyPeer==true. Once the certificate has been validated, also ensure that it applies to the origin server.

Whitebeam release 1.2.2

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