Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

HTTP

Synopsis

$inet->HTTP(httpobject, server, username, password, [port, flags, context])
$inet->HTTP($httpobject, $hashref)

Opens an HTTP connection to server, logging in with the given username and password. The new connection object is saved as httpobject. The parameters and their values are:

server

The server to connect to.

username

The username used to log in to the server. Default is anonymous.

password

The password used to log in to the server. Default is none.

port

The port of the HTTP service on the server. Default is 80.

flags

Additional flags affecting the behavior of the function.

context

A number to identify this operation if it is asynchronous.

If you pass a hash reference, the following values are taken from the hash:

%hash=(
  "server"   => "server",
  "username" => "username",
  "password" => "password",
  "port"     => port,
  "flags"    => flags,
  "context"  => context,
);

The HTTP method returns undef if the connection failed, a number otherwise. You can then call any of the HTTP functions as methods of the newly created httpobject.