What's the simplest way to make a HTTP GET request in Perl?

Question

I have some code I've written in PHP for consuming our simple webservice, which I'd also like to provide in Perl for users who may prefer that language. What's the simplest method of making a HTTP request to do that? In PHP I can do it in one line with file_get_contents().

Here's the entire code I want to port to Perl:

/**
 * Makes a remote call to the our API, and returns the response
 * @param cmd {string} - command string ID
 * @param argsArray {array} - associative array of argument names and argument values
 * @return {array} - array of responses
 */
function callAPI( $cmd, $argsArray=array() )
{
   $apikey="MY_API_KEY";
   $secret="MY_SECRET";
   $apiurl="https://foobar.com/api";

   // timestamp this API was submitted (for security reasons)
   $epoch_time=time();

   //--- assemble argument array into string
   $query = "cmd=" .$cmd;
   foreach ($argsArray as $argName => $argValue) {
       $query .= "&" . $argName . "=" . urlencode($argValue);
   }
   $query .= "&key=". $apikey . "&time=" . $epoch_time;

   //--- make md5 hash of the query + secret string
   $md5 = md5($query . $secret);
   $url = $apiurl . "?" . $query . "&md5=" . $md5;

   //--- make simple HTTP GET request, put the server response into $response
   $response = file_get_contents($url);

   //--- convert "|" (pipe) delimited string to array
   $responseArray = explode("|", $response);
   return $responseArray;
}

Hans Ginzel · Accepted Answer · 2025-04-01 20:33:06Z

84

LWP::Simple:

use LWP::Simple;
$contents = get('http://YOUR_URL_HERE');

edited Apr 1 at 20:33

Hans Ginzel

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answered Sep 25, 2008 at 17:59

Kevin

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4 Comments

davr Over a year ago

so...we've got four responses mentioning LWP::Simple, I guess that's the one to use

AndrewJFord Over a year ago

For static strings like 'URL', it's best to use single quotes to save perl the work of looking for things to interpolate.

Dave Rolsky Over a year ago

For static strings, there's no real overhead with double quotes. The reason to use single quotes is to make it clear to the next programmer that they don't need to look for interpolations in the code.

x-yuri Over a year ago

In case you need anything more complex here's a possible next step. Which can also be found here.

Barry Brown · Accepted Answer · 2008-09-25 18:02:39Z

21

LWP::Simple has the function you're looking for.

use LWP::Simple;
$content = get($url);
die "Can't GET $url" if (! defined $content);

answered Sep 25, 2008 at 18:02

Barry Brown

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Comments

bmdhacks · Accepted Answer · 2008-09-25 17:59:29Z

6

Take a look at LWP::Simple. For more involved queries, there's even a book about it.

answered Sep 25, 2008 at 17:59

bmdhacks

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Comments

szabgab · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-06 04:47:53Z

6

I would use the LWP::Simple module.

edited Apr 6, 2014 at 4:47

szabgab

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answered Sep 25, 2008 at 17:59

AndrewJFord

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Comments

brian d foy · Accepted Answer · 2025-07-24 22:24:05Z

4

Mojo::UserAgent is a great option too!

  use Mojo::UserAgent;
  my $ua = Mojo::UserAgent->new;

  # Say hello to the Unicode snowman with "Do Not Track" header
  say $ua->get('www.☃.net?hello=there' => {DNT => 1})->res->body;

  # Form POST with exception handling
  my $tx = $ua->post('https://metacpan.org/search' => form => {q => 'mojo'});
  if (my $res = $tx->success) { say $res->body }
  else {
    my ($err, $code) = $tx->error;
    say $code ? "$code response: $err" : "Connection error: $err";
  }

  # Quick JSON API request with Basic authentication
  say $ua->get('https://sri:[email protected]/search.json?q=perl')
    ->res->json('/results/0/title');

  # Extract data from HTML and XML resources
  say $ua->get('www.perl.org')->res->dom->html->head->title->text;`

Samples direct from CPAN page. I used this when I couldn't get LWP::Simple to work on my machine.

edited Jul 24 at 22:24

brian d foy

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answered Sep 20, 2013 at 4:23

Dave Horner

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1 Comment

brian d foy Jul 24 at 22:23

And there's the book Mojolicious Web Clients.

Dave Horner · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-08 14:19:43Z

3

Try the HTTP::Request module. Instances of this class are usually passed to the request() method of an LWP::UserAgent object.

edited Aug 8, 2014 at 14:19

Dave Horner

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answered Sep 25, 2008 at 18:00

coppro

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Comments

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-26 11:45:40Z

1

If it's in Unix and if LWP::Simple isn't installed, you can try:

my $content = `GET "http://trackMyPhones.com/"`;

edited Jun 26, 2019 at 11:45

Peter Mortensen

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answered Mar 20, 2015 at 9:23

Srihari Karanth

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2 Comments

matt freake Over a year ago

What is "GET"? It's not installed and doesn't work on my Ubuntu 14.04 Linux.

reinierpost Over a year ago

GET is a utility installed with the LWP Perl library.

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-26 11:48:22Z

1

I think what Srihari might be referencing is Wget, but I would actually recommend (again, on *nix without LWP::Simple) to use cURL:

$ my $content = `curl -s "http://google.com"`;
<HTML><HEAD><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<TITLE>301 Moved</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>
<H1>301 Moved</H1>
The document has moved
<A HREF="http://www.google.com/">here</A>.
</BODY></HTML>

The -s flag tells curl to be silent. Otherwise, you get curl's progress bar output on standard error every time.

edited Jun 26, 2019 at 11:48

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jan 29, 2016 at 20:32

tboz203

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Comments

user3408541 · Accepted Answer · 2025-07-26 22:29:52Z

0

Many people have suggested LWP::Simple, but sometimes users do not have the ability to install modules on the server, or can only do so with great difficulty. If you want to put the code from a webpage into a variable without downloading and installing additional modules, most systems already have wget installed. Try something like this instead...

$weather = `wget -qO - https://api.weather.gov/gridpoints/LOT/79,59/forecast/hourly`;

That retrieves a json file, but it works with html as well. It can also be used to download zip files or whatever is there.

answered Jul 26 at 22:29

user3408541

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