Zend\Http\Client

Overview

Zend\Http\Client provides an easy interface for preforming Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests. Zend\Http\Client supports most simple features expected from an HTTP client, as well as some more complex features such as HTTP authentication and file uploads. Successful requests (and most unsuccessful ones too) return a Zend\Http\Response object, which provides access to the response’s headers and body (see this section).

Quick Start

The class constructor optionally accepts a URL as its first parameter (can be either a string or a Zend\Uri\Http object), and an array or Zend\Config\Config object containing configuration options. Both can be left out, and set later using the setUri() and setConfig() methods.

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use Zend\Http\Client;
$client = new Client('http://example.org', array(
    'maxredirects' => 0,
    'timeout'      => 30
));

// This is actually exactly the same:
$client = new Client();
$client->setUri('http://example.org');
$client->setConfig(array(
    'maxredirects' => 0,
    'timeout'      => 30
));

// You can also use a Zend\Config\Ini object to set the client's configuration
$config = new Zend\Config\Ini('httpclient.ini', 'secure');
$client->setConfig($config);

Note

Zend\Http\Client uses Zend\Uri\Http to validate URLs. This means that some special characters like the pipe symbol (‘|’) or the caret symbol (‘^’) will not be accepted in the URL by default. This can be modified by setting the ‘allowunwise’ option of Zend\Uri to ‘TRUE‘. See this section for more information.

Configuration Options

The constructor and setConfig() method accept an associative array of configuration parameters, or a Zend\Config\Config object. Setting these parameters is optional, as they all have default values.

Zend\Http\Client configuration parameters
Parameter Description Expected Values Default Value
maxredirects Maximum number of redirections to follow (0 = none) integer 5
strict Whether perform validation on header names. When set to FALSE, validation functions will be skipped. Usually this should not be changed boolean TRUE
strictredirects Whether to strictly follow the RFC when redirecting (see this section) boolean FALSE
useragent User agent identifier string (sent in request headers) string ‘Zend\Http\Client’
timeout Connection timeout (seconds) integer 10
httpversion HTTP protocol version (usually ‘1.1’ or ‘1.0’) string ‘1.1’
adapter Connection adapter class to use (see this section) mixed ‘Zend\Http\Client\Adapter\Socket’
keepalive Whether to enable keep-alive connections with the server. Useful and might improve performance if several consecutive requests to the same server are performed. boolean FALSE
storeresponse Whether to store last response for later retrieval with getLastResponse(). If set to FALSEgetLastResponse() will return NULL. boolean TRUE
encodecookies Whether to pass the cookie value through urlencode/urldecode. Enabling this breaks support with some web servers. Disabling this limits the range of values the cookies can contain. boolean TRUE

Available Methods

__construct

__construct(string $uri, array $config)

Constructor

Returns void

setConfig

setConfig(Config|array $config = array ( ))

Set configuration parameters for this HTTP client

Returns Zend\Http\Client

setAdapter

setAdapter(Zend\Http\Client\Adapter|string $adapter)

Load the connection adapter

While this method is not called more than one for a client, it is seperated from ->send() to preserve logic and readability

Returns null

getAdapter

getAdapter()

Load the connection adapter

Returns Zend\Http\Client\Adapter

getRequest

getRequest()

Get Request

Returns Request

getResponse

getResponse()

Get Response

Returns Response

setRequest

setRequest(Zend\Http\Zend\Http\Request $request)

Set request

Returns void

setResponse

setResponse(Zend\Http\Zend\Http\Response $response)

Set response

Returns void

getLastRequest

getLastRequest()

Get the last request (as a string)

Returns string

getLastResponse

getLastResponse()

Get the last response (as a string)

Returns string

getRedirectionsCount

getRedirectionsCount()

Get the redirections count

Returns integer

setUri

setUri(string|Zend\Http\Zend\Uri\Http $uri)

Set Uri (to the request)

Returns void

getUri

getUri()

Get uri (from the request)

Returns Zend\Http\Zend\Uri\Http

setMethod

setMethod(string $method)

Set the HTTP method (to the request)

Returns Zend\Http\Client

getMethod

getMethod()

Get the HTTP method

Returns string

setEncType

setEncType(string $encType, string $boundary)

Set the encoding type and the boundary (if any)

Returns void

getEncType

getEncType()

Get the encoding type

Returns type

setRawBody

setRawBody(string $body)

Set raw body (for advanced use cases)

Returns Zend\Http\Client

setParameterPost

setParameterPost(array $post)

Set the POST parameters

Returns Zend\Http\Client

setParameterGet

setParameterGet(array $query)

Set the GET parameters

Returns Zend\Http\Client

getCookies

getCookies()

Return the current cookies

Returns array

setCookies

setCookies(array $cookies)

Set an array of cookies

Returns Zend\Http\Client

clearCookies

clearCookies()

Clear all the cookies

Returns void

setHeaders

setHeaders(Headers|array $headers)

Set the headers (for the request)

Returns Zend\Http\Client

hasHeader

hasHeader(string $name)

Check if exists the header type specified

Returns boolean

getHeader

getHeader(string $name)

Get the header value of the request

Returns string|boolean

setStream

setStream(string|boolean $streamfile = true)

Set streaming for received data

Returns Zend\Http\Client

getStream

getStream()

Get status of streaming for received data

Returns boolean|string

setAuth

setAuth(string $user, string $password, string $type = 'basic')

Create a HTTP authentication “Authorization:” header according to the specified user, password and authentication method.

Returns Zend\Http\Client

resetParameters

resetParameters()

Reset all the HTTP parameters (auth,cookies,request, response, etc)

Returns void

send

send(Request $request)

Send HTTP request

Returns Response

setFileUpload

setFileUpload(string $filename, string $formname, string $data, string $ctype)

Set a file to upload (using a POST request)

Can be used in two ways: 1. $data is null (default): $filename is treated as the name if a local file which will be read and sent. Will try to guess the content type using mime_content_type(). 2. $data is set - $filename is sent as the file name, but $data is sent as the file contents and no file is read from the file system. In this case, you need to manually set the Content-Type ($ctype) or it will default to application/octet-stream.

Returns Zend\Http\Client

removeFileUpload

removeFileUpload(string $filename)

Remove a file to upload

Returns boolean

encodeFormData

encodeFormData(string $boundary, string $name, mixed $value, string $filename, array $headers = array ( ))

Encode data to a multipart/form-data part suitable for a POST request.

Returns string

Examples

Performing a Simple GET Request

Performing simple HTTP requests is very easily done using the request() method, and rarely needs more than three lines of code:

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use Zend\Config\Client;
$client = new Client('http://example.org');
$response = $client->send();

The request() method takes one optional parameter - the request method. This can be either GET, POST, PUT, HEAD, DELETE, TRACE, OPTIONS or CONNECT as defined by the HTTP protocol [1].

Using Request Methods Other Than GET

For convenience, these are all defined as class constants: Zend\Http\Client::GET, Zend\Http\Client::POST and so on.

If no method is specified, the method set by the last setMethod() call is used. If setMethod() was never called, the default request method is GET (see the above example).

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use Zend\Http\Client;
$client = new Client();
// Preforming a POST request
$response = $client->send('POST');

// Yet another way of preforming a POST request
$client->setMethod(Client::POST);
$response = $client->send();

Adding GET and POST parameters

Adding GET parameters to an HTTP request is quite simple, and can be done either by specifying them as part of the URL, or by using the setParameterGet() method. This method takes the GET parameter’s name as its first parameter, and the GET parameter’s value as its second parameter. For convenience, the setParameterGet() method can also accept a single associative array of name => value GET variables - which may be more comfortable when several GET parameters need to be set.

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use Zend\Http\Client;
$client = new Client();

// Setting a get parameter using the setParameterGet method
$client->setParameterGet('knight', 'lancelot');

// This is equivalent to setting such URL:
$client->setUri('http://example.com/index.php?knight=lancelot');

// Adding several parameters with one call
$client->setParameterGet(array(
    'first_name'  => 'Bender',
    'middle_name' => 'Bending',
    'made_in'     => 'Mexico',
));

Setting POST Parameters

While GET parameters can be sent with every request method, POST parameters are only sent in the body of POST requests. Adding POST parameters to a request is very similar to adding GET parameters, and can be done with the setParameterPost() method, which is similar to the setParameterGet() method in structure.

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use Zend\Http\Client;
$client = new Client();
// Setting a POST parameter
$client->setParameterPost('language', 'fr');

// Setting several POST parameters, one of them with several values
$client->setParameterPost(array(
    'language'  => 'es',
    'country'   => 'ar',
    'selection' => array(45, 32, 80)
));

Note that when sending POST requests, you can set both GET and POST parameters. On the other hand, while setting POST parameters for a non-POST request will not trigger and error, it is useless. Unless the request is a POST request, POST parameters are simply ignored.

Using A Request Object With The Client

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use Zend\Http\Request;
use Zend\Http\Client;
$request = new Request();
$request->setUri('http://www.test.com');
$request->setMethod('POST');
$request->setParameterPost(array('foo' => 'bar'));

$client = new Client();
$response = $client->dispatch($request);

if ($response->isSuccess()) {
    //  the POST was successful
}
[1]See RFC 2616 -http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html.

Project Versions

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