On 8/24/2011 2:18 AM, Johannes Pfau wrote:
Walter Bright wrote:
On 8/17/2011 4:12 PM, David Nadlinger wrote:
the etc.curl module by Jonas Drewsen is at the front of the review
queue.
Thanks for doing this. I preface my remarks with saying I have never
done http: programming and know little about it.
1. The first, most obvious thing I'd like to do is present a URL and
get a string back that is the contents of that web page:
string contents = getURL("http://www.digitalmars.com";);
That's the first example in the API docs:
// Simple GET with connect timeout of 10 seconds
Http.get("http://www.google.com";).connectTimeout(dur!"seconds"(10)).toString();
Ok, but 1. there's no indication in the doc that that's what it does because 1.
it is an incomplete fragment and 2. a simpler interface (like what I proposed)
would likely be better.
or, if you don't care about timeouts:
string contents = Http.get("http://www.google.com";).toString();
This example needs to be first and needs an explanation. Timeouts, error
recovery, progress indicators, etc., should all be brought up later.
and contents[] should be the web page; what I'd see if I opened it in
a browser and selected "view source". From perusing the etc.curl doc I
have absolutely no idea how to do this.
2. I'd like to get the contents as an input range, which I can then
iterate like any other range.
auto res = Http.getAsync("http://www.digitalmars.com";);
auto range = res.byChunk(100);
writeln(range.front);
range.popFront();
writeln(range.front);
There's only a byChunk for synchronous requests, but I think this first
reads the complete Result into memory and then returns slices. (This
is a limitation caused by curl's API, as curl uses callbacks)
Ok.
3. A lot of web sites like twitter.com have an API. How do I access
that API from D?
The twitter API is a REST API, so if you want to get information from
twitter, you use a GET request with a special url:
string xmlTimeLine =
Http.get("http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline.xml?id=walterbright";).toString();
Posting is a little more complicated, as it requires authentication:
ubyte[] result;
Http twitter =
Http("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.format?status=Hello%20World";);
twitter.setAuthentication("user", "password");
twitter.onReceive = (ubyte[] data) { result ~= data; return
data.length; };
twitter.method = Http.Method.post;
twitter.perform();
(Status should be url encoded, Http.escape can be used for that)
Not sure, if this still works though. Twitter is switching from HTTP
basic authentication to OAuth. Also, this code is not tested ;-)
I'm glad to see this can be done. A complete example in the documentation would
be very informative and useful.
4. How do I download a file from ftp?
ubyte[] file =
downloadFile("ftp://www.digitalmars.com/whatever.zip";);
Ftp.get("ftp://www.digitalmars.com/whatever.zip","/tmp/downloaded-file";);
or
ubyte[] file = Ftp.get("ftp://www.digitalmars.com/whatever.zip";).bytes;
Great! Please add to the documentation.
I also think that etc.curl would benefit greatly from an article written about
it showing how to use it to accomplish various fun and simple tasks.
