HTTP requests

Introduction

An HTTP request is a way to "communicate" your application with external sources on the web. Using requests you can call APIs, retrieve data from another websites, among other functionalities.

You can make HTTP requests in a very simple and intuitive way using Glowie Crawler class.

From your controller, create a new instance of Glowie\Core\Tools\Crawler using:

use Glowie\Core\Tools\Crawler;
$crawler = new Crawler();

You can pass three optional parameters in the constructor: the first is an array of custom headers to send in the request. Must be an associative array with the key being the name of the header and the value the header value (can be a string or an array of strings).

Example

use Glowie\Core\Tools\Crawler;

$headers = [
    'Content-Type' => 'text/plain',
    'X-Foo' => ['Bar', 'Baz']
];

$crawler = new Crawler($headers);

The second parameter is an array of custom cookies to send in the request. Must be an associative array with the key being the name of the header and the value the header value.

Example

use Glowie\Core\Tools\Crawler;

$cookies = [
    'mycookie' => '1234'
]

$crawler = new Crawler($headers, $cookies);

The third parameter is the timeout setting. See below how it works.

Adding request headers

If you want to add a header to the request, use the $crawler->addHeader() method. The first parameter is the header name, and the second the value you want to set.

Example

$crawler->addHeader('Content-Encoding', 'gzip');

Shortcuts There are also a few shortcuts to the most commonly used headers:

• $crawler->setContentType() - Sets the Content-Type header. The Crawler class has a few constants with the most common content types.

• $crawler->setAuthorization() - Sets a basic Authorization header. The first parameter is the username and the second is the password.

Adding request cookies

If you want to pass custom cookies in the request, use the $crawler->addCookie() method. The first parameter is the cookie name, and the second the value you want to set.

Example

$crawler->addCookie('mycookie', '1234');

Setting the request timeout

If you want to set the request timeout, use $crawler->setTimeout() method.

The first parameter is the maximum number of seconds that the request can wait for a response before failing. Default is 30 seconds. Use 0 for unlimited.

Example

$crawler->setTimeout(10); # Sets the timeout to 10 seconds

Making the request

To perform a request, use $crawler->request() function. This function accepts the following parameters:

url The URL you want to request.

method The HTTP method you want to use in the request. Default is GET.

data Data to send in the request. Content-Type header must be needed depending on chosen data type.

Example

$data = [
    'id' = 1,
    'name' => 'Glowie'
];

$result = $crawler->request('https://myrequesturl.com', 'POST', $data);

Shortcuts You can use shortcuts to the most used request methods with any of the following functions:

$crawler->get(); # GET request
$crawler->post(); # POST request
$crawler->put(); # PUT request
$crawler->patch(); # PATCH request
$crawler->delete(); # DELETE request

The parameters for this functions are the same from $crawler->request(), except for GET method, who does not accept the data parameter.

Getting the response

If the HTTP request is done successfully (with a 200 response code), Crawler will return the response body as a string, otherwise it returns false.