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HTTP Client

Overview

The HTTP client library allows you to send HTTP requests and parse HTTP responses. The library communicates over the sockets API but it does not create sockets on its own. It can be enabled with CONFIG_HTTP_CLIENT Kconfig option.

The application must be responsible for creating a socket and passing it to the library. Therefore, depending on the application’s needs, the library can communicate over either a plain TCP socket (HTTP) or a TLS socket (HTTPS).

Sample Usage

The API of the HTTP client library has a single function.

The following is an example of a request structure created correctly:

struct http_request req = { 0 };
static uint8_t recv_buf[512];

req.method = HTTP_GET;
req.url = "/";
req.host = "localhost";
req.protocol = "HTTP/1.1";
req.response = response_cb;
req.recv_buf = recv_buf;
req.recv_buf_len = sizeof(recv_buf);

/* sock is a file descriptor referencing a socket that has been connected
 * to the HTTP server.
 */
ret = http_client_req(sock, &req, 5000, NULL);

If the server responds to the request, the library provides the response to the application through the response callback registered in the request structure. As the library can provide the response in chunks, the application must be able to process these.

Together with the structure containing the response data, the callback function also provides information about whether the library expects to receive more data.

The following is an example of a very simple response handling function:

static void response_cb(struct http_response *rsp,
                        enum http_final_call final_data,
                        void *user_data)
{
    if (final_data == HTTP_DATA_MORE) {
        LOG_INF("Partial data received (%zd bytes)", rsp->data_len);
    } else if (final_data == HTTP_DATA_FINAL) {
        LOG_INF("All the data received (%zd bytes)", rsp->data_len);
    }

    LOG_INF("Response status %s", rsp->http_status);
}

See HTTP client sample application for more information about the library usage.

API Reference

HTTP client API