The HTTP package supports client-side web programming in Haskell. It lets you set up
HTTP connections, transmitting requests and processing the responses coming back, all
from within the comforts of Haskell. It's dependent on the network package to operate,
but other than that, the implementation is all written in Haskell.
A basic API for issuing single HTTP requests + receiving responses is provided. On top
of that, a session-level abstraction is also on offer (the BrowserAction monad);
it taking care of handling the management of persistent connections, proxies,
state (cookies) and authentication credentials required to handle multi-step
interactions with a web server.
The representation of the bytes flowing across is extensible via the use of a type class,
letting you pick the representation of requests and responses that best fits your use.
Some pre-packaged, common instances are provided for you (ByteString, String).
Here's an example use:
do
rsp <- Network.HTTP.simpleHTTP (getRequest "http://www.haskell.org/")
-- fetch document and return it (as a 'String'.)
fmap (take 100) (getResponseBody rsp)
do
(_, rsp)
<- Network.Browser.browse $ do
setAllowRedirects True -- handle HTTP redirects
request $ getRequest "http://www.haskell.org/"
return (take 100 (rspBody rsp))
