HTTP::Message(3)

🦋 HTTP::Message — HTTP style message (base class) 💅

okay bestie, you've landed on the HTTP::Message(3) page from your friendly neighbourhood User Contributed Perl Documentation ✨. This is the base class, the blueprint before the blueprint, and it's giving main character energy. Let's go 🫶

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🌸 NAME

HTTP::Message — HTTP style message (base class)

⭐ VERSION

version 7.03 🎀

🎀 SYNOPSIS

use parent 'HTTP::Message';

💖 DESCRIPTION

An HTTP::Message object is literally just some headers plus a content body. That's the whole vibe, no cap. The following methods are available:

• $mess = HTTP::Message->new
• $mess = HTTP::Message->new( $headers )
• $mess = HTTP::Message->new( $headers, $content )

This constructs a new message object. Normally you'd actually want to build an HTTP::Request or HTTP::Response instead, just so you know 👀

The optional $header argument should be a reference to an HTTP::Headers object or a plain array reference of key/value pairs. If you hand it an HTTP::Headers object then a copy of it gets embedded into the constructed message — meaning it's not owned by the message, and you can still modify it afterwards without affecting the message. Cute, right? 💅

The optional $content argument should be a string of bytes.

• $mess = HTTP::Message->parse( $str )

This constructs a new message object by parsing the given string. Slay 🔥

• $mess->headers

Returns the embedded HTTP::Headers object.

• $mess->headers_as_string
• $mess->headers_as_string( $eol )

Calls the as_string() method for the headers in the message. This is the same as

$mess->headers->as_string

but it makes your program a whole character shorter :-) and honestly? iconic.

• $mess->content
• $mess->content( $bytes )

The content() method sets the raw content if an argument is given. If no argument is given the content is not touched. Either way, the original raw content is returned. 🫶

If the undef argument is given, the content is reset to its default value, which is an empty string.

Note that the content should be a string of bytes. Strings in perl can contain characters outside the range of a byte. The Encode module can be used to turn such strings into a string of bytes. ✨

• $mess->add_content( $bytes )

The add_content() method appends more data bytes to the end of the current content buffer.

• $mess->add_content_utf8( $string )

The add_content_utf8() method appends the UTF-8 bytes representing the string to the end of the current content buffer. UTF-8 bestie, we love to see it 🦋

• $mess->content_ref
• $mess->content_ref( \$bytes )

The content_ref() method returns a reference to the content buffer string. It can be more efficient to access the content this way if the content is huge, and it can even be used for direct manipulation of the content, for instance:

${$res->content_ref} =~ s/\bfoo\b/bar/g;

This example would modify the content buffer in-place 😭 (respectfully).

If an argument is passed it will setup the content to reference some external source. The content() and add_content() methods will automatically dereference scalar references passed this way. For other references, content() will return the reference itself and add_content() will refuse to do anything. It said no 💀

• $mess->content_charset

This returns the charset used by the content in the message. The charset is either found as the charset attribute of the Content-Type header or by guessing 🔍

See <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/charset.html#spec-char-encoding> for details about how charset is determined.

• $mess->decoded_content( %options )

Returns the content with any Content-Encoding undone and, for textual content (Content-Type values starting with text/, exactly matching application/xml, or ending with +xml), the raw content's character set decoded into Perl's Unicode string format.

Heads up bestie: this does not currently attempt to decode declared character sets for any other content types like application/json or application/javascript (see <https://github.com/libwww-perl/HTTP-Message/pull/99>). If the Content-Encoding or charset of the message is unknown, this method will fail by returning undef 😭

The following options can be specified:

• charset — This overrides the charset parameter for text content. The value none can be used to suppress decoding of the charset.
• default_charset — This overrides the default charset guessed by content_charset() or, if that fails, ISO-8859-1.
• alt_charset — If decoding fails because the charset specified in the Content-Type header isn't recognized by Perl's Encode module, then try decoding using this charset instead of failing. The alt_charset might be specified as none to simply return the string without any decoding of charset as alternative.
• charset_strict — Abort decoding if malformed characters are found in the content. By default you get the substitution character (\x{FFFD}) in place of malformed characters.
• raise_error — If TRUE then raise an exception if not able to decode content. Reason might be that the specified Content-Encoding or charset is not supported. If this option is FALSE, then decoded_content() will return undef on errors, but will still set $@.
• ref — If TRUE then a reference to decoded content is returned. This might be more efficient in cases where the decoded content is identical to the raw content, as no data copying is required in this case. Efficient queen 👑
• $mess->decodable
• HTTP::Message::decodable()

This returns the encoding identifiers that decoded_content() can process. In scalar context it returns a comma separated string of identifiers.

This value is suitable for initializing the Accept-Encoding request header field. Periodt.

• $mess->decode

This method tries to replace the content of the message with the decoded version and removes the Content-Encoding header. Returns TRUE if successful and FALSE if not.

If the message does not have a Content-Encoding header this method does nothing and returns TRUE. No thoughts, just TRUE ✨

Note that the content of the message is still bytes after this method has been called, and you still need to call decoded_content() if you want to process its content as a string. Don't skip that step bestie 🙈

• $mess->encode( $encoding, ... )

Apply the given encodings to the content of the message. Returns TRUE if successful. The identity (non-)encoding is always supported; other currently supported encodings, subject to availability of required additional modules, are gzip, deflate, x-bzip2, base64 and br. 🗜️

A successful call to this function will set the Content-Encoding header.

Note that multipart/* or message/* messages can't be encoded and this method will croak if you try. It said absolutely not 💀

• $mess->parts
• $mess->parts( @parts )
• $mess->parts( \@parts )

Messages can be composite, i.e. contain other messages. The composite messages have a content type of multipart/* or message/*. This method gives access to the contained messages 🪆

The argumentless form will return a list of HTTP::Message objects. If the content type of $msg is not multipart/* or message/* then this will return the empty list. In scalar context only the first object is returned. The returned message parts should be regarded as read-only (future versions of this library might make it possible to modify the parent by modifying the parts).

If the content type of $msg is message/* then there will only be one part returned.

If the content type is message/http, then the return value will be either an HTTP::Request or an HTTP::Response object.

If a @parts argument is given, then the content of the message will be modified. The array reference form is provided so that an empty list can be provided. The @parts array should contain HTTP::Message objects. The @parts objects are owned by $mess after this call and should not be modified or made part of other messages.

When updating the message with this method and the old content type of $mess is not multipart/* or message/*, then the content type is set to multipart/mixed and all other content headers are cleared. Fresh start, we love a reset 🌈

This method will croak if the content type is message/* and more than one part is provided.

• $mess->add_part( $part )

This will add a part to a message. The $part argument should be another HTTP::Message object. If the previous content type of $mess is not multipart/* then the old content (together with all content headers) will be made part #1 and the content type made multipart/mixed before the new part is added. The $part object is owned by $mess after this call and should not be modified or made part of other messages.

There is no return value.

• $mess->clear

Will clear the headers and set the content to the empty string. There is no return value. Clean slate energy ✨

• $mess->protocol
• $mess->protocol( $proto )

Sets the HTTP protocol used for the message. The protocol() is a string like HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1.

• $mess->clone

Returns a copy of the message object. It's giving twin energy 👯

• $mess->as_string
• $mess->as_string( $eol )

Returns the message formatted as a single string.

The optional $eol parameter specifies the line ending sequence to use. The default is "\n". If no $eol is given then as_string will ensure that the returned string is newline terminated (even when the message content is not). No extra newline is appended if an explicit $eol is passed. Details matter, bestie 💅

• $mess->dump( %opt )

Returns the message formatted as a string. In void context it prints the string.

This differs from $mess->as_string in that it escapes the bytes of the content so that it's safe to print them, and it limits how much content to print. The escapes syntax used is the same as for Perl's double quoted strings. If there is no content, the string (no content) is shown in its place.

Options to influence the output can be passed as key/value pairs. The following options are recognized:

• maxlength => $num — How much of the content to show. The default is 512. Set this to 0 for unlimited. If the content is longer then the string is chopped at the limit and the string "...\n(### more bytes not shown)" appended.
• no_content => $str — Replaces the (no content) marker.
• prefix => $str — A string that will be prefixed to each line of the dump.

okay so here's the tea ☕: literally every method that HTTP::Message doesn't know how to do itself? It doesn't just panic and leave you on read 💀 — it delegates it straight to the HTTP::Headers object that comes bundled inside every single message. Every one of them. No cap. 🫶

That's the whole trick, and it's giving convenience — it means you get all the header-y goodness without ever having to go dig around manually. So iconic of it, honestly. ✨

For the full breakdown on what each of these actually does, go bother HTTP::Headers — that's where the real details live, and it's a whole other page. Here's the roster of what gets handed off 👇

$mess->header( $field => $val )
$mess->push_header( $field => $val )
$mess->init_header( $field => $val )
$mess->remove_header( $field )
$mess->remove_content_headers
$mess->header_field_names
$mess->scan( \&doit )

$mess->date
$mess->expires
$mess->if_modified_since
$mess->if_unmodified_since
$mess->last_modified
$mess->content_type
$mess->content_encoding
$mess->content_length
$mess->content_language
$mess->title
$mess->user_agent
$mess->server
$mess->from
$mess->referer
$mess->www_authenticate
$mess->authorization
$mess->proxy_authorization
$mess->authorization_basic
$mess->proxy_authorization_basic

Look at that list. Twenty-something methods just... living rent-free on your message because the delegation is doing its job. 💅

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

This masterpiece was authored by Gisle Aas <gisle@activestate.com> — put some respect on the name, fr fr. 🫡

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💖 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE 💖

Okay so the legal bits, but make it cute:

This software is copyright (c) 1994 by Gisle Aas.

It's free software 🎀 — you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself. That's it, that's the deal, no weird fine print hiding in the DMs. ✨

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And that's a wrap, bestie!! 🌈 This page is from perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-07-23, and you just finished reading HTTP::Message(3). Go forth and delegate responsibly 💅🌸🦋