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HTTP::Parser::XS(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation HTTP::Parser::XS(3)

NAME

HTTP::Parser::XS - a fast, primitive HTTP request parser

SYNOPSIS

  use HTTP::Parser::XS qw(parse_http_request);
  # for HTTP servers
  my $ret = parse_http_request(
      "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: ...\r\n\r\n",
      \%env,
  );
  if ($ret == -2) {
      # request is incomplete
      ...
  } elsif ($ret == -1) {
      # request is broken
      ...
  } else {
      # $ret includes the size of the request, %env now contains a PSGI
      # request, if it is a POST / PUT request, read request content by
      # yourself
      ...
  }
  # for HTTP clients
  use HTTP::Parser::XS qw(parse_http_response HEADERS_AS_ARRAYREF);
  my %special_headers = (
    'content-length' => undef,
  );
  my($ret, $minor_version, $status, $message, $headers)
    = parse_http_response($response, HEADERS_AS_ARRAYREF, \%special_headers);
  if($ret == -1) }
    # response is incomplete
  }
  elsif($ret == -2) {
    # response is broken
  }
  else {
    # $ret is the length of the headers, starting the content body
    # the other values are the response messages. For example:
    # $status  = 200
    # $message = "OK"
    # $headers = [ 'content-type' => 'text/html', ... ]
    # and $special_headers{'content-length'} will be filled in
  }

DESCRIPTION

HTTP::Parser::XS is a fast, primitive HTTP request/response parser.

The request parser can be used either for writing a synchronous HTTP server or a event-driven server.

The response parser can be used for writing HTTP clients.

Note that even if this distribution name ends "::XS", pure Perl implementation is supported, so you can use this module on compiler-less environments.

FUNCTIONS

Tries to parse given request string, and if successful, inserts variables into %env. For the name of the variables inserted, please refer to the PSGI specification. The return values are:
>=0
length of the request (request line and the request headers), in bytes
-1
given request is corrupt
-2
given request is incomplete

Note that the semantics of PATH_INFO is somewhat different from Apache. First, HTTP::Parser::XS does not validate the variable; it does not raise an error even if PATH_INFO does not start with "/". Second, the variable is conformant to RFC 3875 (and PSGI / Plack) in the fact that "//" and ".." appearing in PATH_INFO are preserved whereas Apache transcodes them.

Tries to parse given response string. $header_format must be "HEADERS_AS_ARRAYREF", "HEADERS_AS_HASHREF", or "HEADERS_NONE", which are exportable constants.

The optional %special_headers is for headers you specifically require. You can set any HTTP response header names, which must be lower-cased, and their default values, and then the values are filled in by parse_http_response(). For example, if you want the "Cointent-Length" field, set its name with default values like "%h = ('content-length' => undef)" and pass it as %special_headers. After parsing, $h{'content-length'} is set if the response has the "Content-Length" field, otherwise it's not touched.

The return values are:

$ret
The parsering status, which is the same as parse_http_response(). i.e. the length of the response headers in bytes, -1 for incomplete headers, or -2 for errors.

If the given response string is broken or imcomplete, parse_http_response() returns only this value.

$minor_version
The minor version of the given response. i.e. 1 for HTTP/1.1, 0 for HTTP/1.0.
$status
The HTTP status of the given response. e.g. 200 for success.
$message
The HTTP status message. e.g. "OK" for success.
$headers
The HTTP headers for the given response. It is an ARRAY reference if $header_format is "HEADERS_AS_ARRAYREF", a HASH reference on "HEADERS_AS_HASHREF", an "undef" on "HEADERS_NONE".

The names of the headers are normalized to lower-cased.

LIMITATIONS

Both parse_http_request() and parse_http_response() in XS implementation have some size limitations.

The number of headers

The number of headers is limited to 128. If it exceeds, both parsing routines report parsing errors, i.e. return -1 for $ret.

The size of header names

The size of header names is limited to 1024, but the parsers do not the same action.

parse_http_request() returns -1 if too-long header names exist.

parse_http_request() simply ignores too-long header names.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2009- Kazuho Oku

AUTHORS

THANKS TO

SEE ALSO

LICENSE

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

2025-10-10 perl v5.42.0