http request examples for luasocket

I was looking for http library in lua and landed in luasocket.http page. It isn’t well documented, sent few GET, POST, PUT requests and figured few bits. This blog post aims in bridging the gap(code examples).

In this example, I will use httpbin as target site. The complete code is available as gist.

The following code should be executed like a standalone lua file(lua lua_httpbin.lua) and while executing the code in interpreter please make local variables http, ltn12, base_url as global variables.

local http = require("socket.http")
local ltn12 = require("ltn12")

local base_url = "https://httpbin.org/"

--Helper for priniting nested table
function deep_print(tbl)
    for i, v in pairs(tbl) do
        if type(v) == "table" then 
            deep_print(v)
        else 
            print(i, v) 
        end
    end
end

function http_request( args )
--http.request(url [, body])
--http.request{
--  url = string,
--  [sink = LTN12 sink,]
--  [method = string,]
--  [headers = header-table,]
--  [source = LTN12 source],
--  [step = LTN12 pump step,]
--  [proxy = string,]
--  [redirect = boolean,]
--  [create = function]
--}
--
--
    local resp, r = {}, {}
    if args.endpoint then
        local params = ""
        if args.method == nil or args.method == "GET" then
            -- prepare query parameters like http://xyz.com?q=23&a=2
            if args.params then
                for i, v in pairs(args.params) do
                    params = params .. i .. "=" .. v .. "&"
                end
            end
        end
        params = string.sub(params, 1, -2)
        local url = ""
        if params then url = base_url .. args.endpoint .. "?" .. params else url = base_url .. args.endpoint end
        client, code, headers, status = http.request{url=url, sink=ltn12.sink.table(resp),
                                                method=args.method or "GET", headers=args.headers, source=args.source,
                                                step=args.step,     proxy=args.proxy, redirect=args.redirect, create=args.create }
        r['code'], r['headers'], r['status'], r['response'] = code, headers, status, resp
    else
        error("endpoint is missing")
    end
    return r
end

http_request takes table as an argument which is almost similar to http.request function with an extra parameter params which will be helpful for passing parameters to GET request.

http_request{endpoint=endpoint, params={age=23, name="kracekumar"}} rather than http_request{endpoint=endpoint .. "?age=23&name=kracekumar"}.

Remaining piece of code

function main()
    -- Normal GET request
    endpoint = "/user-agent"
    print(endpoint)
    deep_print(http_request{endpoint=endpoint})
    -- GET request with parameters
    endpoint = "/get"
    print(endpoint)
    deep_print(http_request{endpoint=endpoint, params={age=23, name    ="kracekumar"}})
    -- POST request with form
    endpoint = "/post"
    print(endpoint)
    local req_body = "a=2"
    local headers = {
    ["Content-Type"] = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
    ["Content-Length"] = #req_body;
    }
    deep_print(http_request{endpoint=endpoint, method="POST", source=ltn12.source.string(req_body), headers=headers})
    -- PATCH Method
    endpoint = "/patch"
    print(endpoint)
    deep_print(http_request{endpoint=endpoint, method="PATCH"})
    -- PUT Method
    endpoint = "/put"
    print(endpoint)
    deep_print(http_request{endpoint=endpoint, method="PUT", source    =ltn12.source.string("a=23")})
    -- Delete method
    endpoint = "/delete"
    print(endpoint)
    deep_print(http_request{endpoint=endpoint, method="DELETE",     source=ltn12.source.string("a=23")})

end

main()

output

# First lua is directory name 
➜  lua  lua lua_httpbin.lua
/user-agent
status    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
code    200
connection  Close
content-type    application/json
date    Fri, 19 Jul 2013 07:32:14 GMT
content-length  37
access-control-allow-origin *
server  gunicorn/0.17.4
1   {
  "user-agent": "LuaSocket 2.0.2"
}
/get
status  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
code    200
connection  Close
content-type    application/json
date    Fri, 19 Jul 2013 07:32:15 GMT
content-length  258
access-control-allow-origin *
server  gunicorn/0.17.4
1   {
  "headers": {
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "Connection": "close",
    "User-Agent": "LuaSocket 2.0.2"
  },
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/get?age=23&amp;name=kracekumar",
  "args": {
    "age": "23",
    "name": "kracekumar"
  },
  "origin": "106.51.166.47"
}
/post
status    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
code    200
connection  Close
content-type    application/json
date    Fri, 19 Jul 2013 07:41:54 GMT
content-length  350
access-control-allow-origin *
server  gunicorn/0.17.4
1   {
    "json": null,
    "origin": "106.51.166.47",
    "form": {
        "a": "2"
    },
    "url": "http://httpbin.org/post",
    "args": {},
    "headers": {
    "Connection": "close",
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "User-Agent": "LuaSocket 2.0.2",
    "Content-Type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
    "Content-Length": "3"
    },
"files": {},
"data": ""
}
/patch
status  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
code    200
connection  Close
content-type    application/json
date    Fri, 19 Jul 2013 07:32:17 GMT
content-length  251
access-control-allow-origin *
server  gunicorn/0.17.4
1   {
  "files": {},
  "headers": {
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "Connection": "close",
    "User-Agent": "LuaSocket 2.0.2"
  },
  "args": {},
  "json": null,
  "form": {},
  "origin": "106.51.166.47",
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/patch",
  "data": ""
}
/put
status  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
code    200
connection  Close
content-type    application/json
date    Fri, 19 Jul 2013 07:32:18 GMT
content-length  276
access-control-allow-origin *
server  gunicorn/0.17.4
1   {
  "json": null,
  "origin": "106.51.166.47",
  "form": {},
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/put",
  "args": {},
  "headers": {
    "Connection": "close",
    "Host": "httpbin.org",
    "User-Agent": "LuaSocket 2.0.2",
    "Content-Length": "0"
  },
  "files": {},
  "data": ""
}
/delete
status  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
code    200
connection  Close
content-type    application/json
date    Fri, 19 Jul 2013 07:32:19 GMT
content-length  223
access-control-allow-origin *
server  gunicorn/0.17.4
1   {
  "args": {},
  "json": null,
  "headers": {
    "Connection": "close",
    "User-Agent": "LuaSocket 2.0.2",
    "Host": "httpbin.org"
  },
  "origin": "106.51.166.47",
  "data": "",
  "url": "http://httpbin.org/delete"
}

My 2p

When sending GET request don’t send paramters in request body.
When sending POST request set custom header for form.

My experience of luasocket.http produces solid reason to create a new library with helper functions like requests.

lua http luasocket

See also