Perl HTTP Daemon Server- Reading POST JSON body - perl

I was using HTTP::Daemon to create a http server for my API. With the help of following example and doc, I was able to create a basic HTTP server.
However, my API should accepts JSON as a body in post request to the server. So, I need to read the JSON so that I can process it. I know, how to read url param $r->uri->query_form();
Is there a way to read POST JSON?

use JSON;
use Data::Dumper;
my $json = decode_json($r->content);
print Dumper $json;

Related

Fetch text/event-stream web response using WWW::Mechanize or LWP::UserAgent

I'm using WWW::Mechanize to fetch a web page that includes a Google Maps widget that receives constant data from a single response of type text/event-stream.
That kind of response is like a never ending response from the server that constantly returns updated data for the widget to work.
I'm trying to find out how to read that exact response from Perl. Using something like:
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new;
# Do some normal GET and POST requests to authenticate and set cookies for the session
# Now try to get that text/event-stream response
$mech->get('https://some.domain.com/event_stream_page');
But that doesn't work because the response never ends.
How can I make that request and start reading the response and do something with that data every time the server updates the stream?
Found a way to do this. Using a handler from LWP, from which WWW::Mechanize inherits:
$mech->add_handler (
'response_data',
sub {
my ($response, $ua, $h, $data) = #_;
# Your chunk of response is now in $data, do what you need
# If you plan on reading an infinite stream, it's a good idea to clean the response so it doesn't grow infinitely too!
$response->content(undef);
# Important to return a true value if you want to keep reading the response!
return 1;
},
);

how to know which http action called from rest client at server side

When a request was made(actions like GET POST PATCH) to server through a rest client like LWP or REST::Client or HTTP::Request. how can we decode the request so that we will get the actual method which is called from client. if we can get the action we will process or respond to client accordingly.
this way i am able to get headers, all params sent in post request.
my $q = CGI->new;
my $input = $q->param( 'POSTDATA' ); # for content
my %headers = map { $_ => $q->http($_) } $q->http();
print $q->header('text/plain');
print "Got the following headers:\n";
for my $header ( keys %headers ) {
print "$header: $headers{$header}\n";
}
Now my question is how to receive the action like GET or POST.
From the docs
request_method()
Returns the method used to access your script, usually one of 'POST', 'GET' or 'HEAD'.
Also from the docs:
CGI.pm is no longer considered good practice for developing web applications, including quick prototyping and small web scripts. There are far better, cleaner, quicker, easier, safer, more scalable, more extensible, more modern alternatives available at this point in time. These will be documented with CGI::Alternatives.

CGI Perl Echo back POSTed application/x-www-form-urlencoded Content

I need a simple CGI based Perl script to receive a POST (directly, not from another HTML page) with Content-Type being application/x-www-form-urlencoded and to echo back
I received: (encoded string)
(and if possible)
decoded, the string is: (decoded string)
I am new to CGI Perl, and this is a one off request for testing a product (I'm a sysadmin. not a programmer). I intend to learn Perl more deeply in the future, but in this case I'm hoping for a gimme.
To start off, I will quickly skim some of the basics.
Following is the package for PERL/CGI application:
use CGI;
To create CGI object:
my $web = CGI->new;
Make sure you set and then write HTTP headers to outstream, before flushing out any CGI data to outstream. Otherwise you would end up in 500 error.
To set the headers:
print $web->header();
print $web->header('application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
To receive any post data from HTML, say for example,
http://example.com?POSTDATA=helloworld
you may use param() function:
my $data = $web->param('POSTDATA');
scalar $data would be set with "helloworld".
It is advisable to check if $web->param('POSTDATA') is defined before you assign to a scalar.

How can I find the final URL after all redirections in Perl?

Lets say I have "http://www.ritzcarlton.com" and that redirects me to "http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Default.htm". Is there a way in Perl to find the end url after all the redirects?
Using LWP will follow the redirections for you. You can then interrogate the HTTP::Request object to find out the URI it requested.
use LWP::UserAgent qw();
my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $response = $ua->get('http://www.ritzcarlton.com');
print $response->request->uri . "\n";
Output is:
http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Default.htm
If you're issuing HTTP requests yourself, then the redirect URL will be in the returned Location: header. If you're using a proper HTTP client like LWP::UserAgent or WWW::Mechanize, which is what you should be doing, redirection is handled automatically.

How can I get the entire request body with CGI.pm?

I'm trying to write a Perl CGI script to handle XML-RPC requests, in which an XML document is sent as the body of an HTTP POST request.
The CGI.pm module does a great job at extracting named params from an HTTP request, but I can't figure out how to make it give me the entire HTTP request body (i.e. the XML document in the XML-RPC request I'm handling).
If not CGI.pm, is there another module that would be able to parse this information out of the request? I'd prefer not to have to extract this information "by hand" from the environment variables. Thanks for any help.
You can get the raw POST data by using the special parameter name POSTDATA.
my $q = CGI->new;
my $xml = $q->param( 'POSTDATA' );
Alternatively, you could read STDIN directly instead of using CGI.pm, but then you lose all the other useful stuff that CGI.pm does.
The POSTDATA trick is documented in the excellent CGI.pm docs here.
Right, one could use POSTDATA, but that only works if the request Content-Type has not been set to 'multipart/form-data'.
If it is set to 'multipart/form-data', CGI.pm does its own content processing and POSTDATA is not initialized.
So, other options include $cgi->query_string and/or $cgi->Dump.
The $cgi->query_string returns the contents of the POST in a GET format (param=value&...), and there doesn't seem to be a way to simply get the contents of the POST STDIN as they were passed in by the client.
So to get the actual content of the standard input of a POST request, if modifying CGI.pm is an option for you, you could modify around line 620 to save the content of #lines somewhere in a variable, such as:
$self->{standard_input} = join '', #lines;
And then access it through $cgi->{standard_input}.
To handle all cases, including those when Content-Type is multipart/form-data, read (and put back) the raw data, before CGI does.
use strict;
use warnings;
use IO::Handle;
use IO::Scalar;
STDIN->blocking(1); # ensure to read everything
my $cgi_raw = '';
{
local $/;
$cgi_raw = <STDIN>;
my $s;
tie *STDIN, 'IO::Scalar', \$s;
print STDIN $cgi_raw;
tied(*STDIN)->setpos(0);
}
use CGI qw /:standard/;
...