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An async client to do many requests, each with different URLs, curl options, etc.

Value

An object of class AsyncVaried with variables and methods. HttpResponse objects are returned in the order they are passed in. We print the first 10.

Failure behavior

HTTP requests mostly fail in ways that you are probably familiar with, including when there's a 400 response (the URL not found), and when the server made a mistake (a 500 series HTTP status code).

But requests can fail sometimes where there is no HTTP status code, and no agreed upon way to handle it other than to just fail immediately.

When a request fails when using synchronous requests (see HttpClient) you get an error message that stops your code progression immediately saying for example:

  • "Could not resolve host: https://foo.com"

  • "Failed to connect to foo.com"

  • "Resolving timed out after 10 milliseconds"

However, for async requests we don't want to fail immediately because that would stop the subsequent requests from occurring. Thus, when we find that a request fails for one of the reasons above we give back a HttpResponse object just like any other response, and:

  • capture the error message and put it in the content slot of the response object (thus calls to content and parse() work correctly)

  • give back a 0 HTTP status code. we handle this specially when testing whether the request was successful or not with e.g., the success() method

R6 classes

This is an R6 class from the package R6. Find out more about R6 at https://r6.r-lib.org/. After creating an instance of an R6 class (e.g., x <- HttpClient$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org")) you can access values and methods on the object x.

See also

Methods


Method print()

print method for AsyncVaried objects

Usage

AsyncVaried$print(x, ...)

Arguments

x

self

...

ignored


Method new()

Create a new AsyncVaried object

Usage

AsyncVaried$new(..., .list = list())

Arguments

..., .list

Any number of objects of class HttpRequest(), must supply inputs to one of these parameters, but not both

Returns

A new AsyncVaried object


Method request()

Execute asynchronous requests

Usage

AsyncVaried$request()

Returns

nothing, responses stored inside object, though will print messages if you choose verbose output


Method responses()

List responses

Usage

AsyncVaried$responses()

Details

An S3 print method is used to summarise results. unclass the output to see the list, or index to results, e.g., [1], [1:3]

Returns

a list of HttpResponse objects, empty list before requests made


Method requests()

List requests

Usage

AsyncVaried$requests()

Returns

a list of HttpRequest objects, empty list before requests made


Method parse()

parse content

Usage

AsyncVaried$parse(encoding = "UTF-8")

Arguments

encoding

(character) the encoding to use in parsing. default:"UTF-8"

Returns

character vector, empty character vector before requests made


Method status_code()

Get HTTP status codes for each response

Usage

AsyncVaried$status_code()

Returns

numeric vector, empty numeric vector before requests made


Method status()

List HTTP status objects

Usage

AsyncVaried$status()

Returns

a list of http_code objects, empty list before requests made


Method content()

Get raw content for each response

Usage

AsyncVaried$content()

Returns

raw list, empty list before requests made


Method times()

curl request times

Usage

AsyncVaried$times()

Returns

list of named numeric vectors, empty list before requests made


Method clone()

The objects of this class are cloneable with this method.

Usage

AsyncVaried$clone(deep = FALSE)

Arguments

deep

Whether to make a deep clone.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# pass in requests via ...
req1 <- HttpRequest$new(
  url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/get",
  opts = list(verbose = TRUE),
  headers = list(foo = "bar")
)$get()
req2 <- HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/post")$post()

# Create an AsyncVaried object
out <- AsyncVaried$new(req1, req2)

# before you make requests, the methods return empty objects
out$status()
out$status_code()
out$content()
out$times()
out$parse()
out$responses()

# make requests
out$request()

# access various parts
## http status objects
out$status()
## status codes
out$status_code()
## content (raw data)
out$content()
## times
out$times()
## parsed content
out$parse()
## response objects
out$responses()

# use $verb() method to select http verb
method <- "post"
req1 <- HttpRequest$new(
  url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/post",
  opts = list(verbose = TRUE),
  headers = list(foo = "bar")
)$verb(method)
req2 <- HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/post")$verb(method)
out <- AsyncVaried$new(req1, req2)
out
out$request()
out$responses()

# pass in requests in a list via .list param
reqlist <- list(
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/get")$get(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/post")$post(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/put")$put(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/delete")$delete(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/get?g=5")$get(),
  HttpRequest$new(
    url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/post")$post(body = list(y = 9)),
  HttpRequest$new(
    url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/get")$get(query = list(hello = "world"))
)

out <- AsyncVaried$new(.list = reqlist)
out$request()
out$status()
out$status_code()
out$content()
out$times()
out$parse()

# using auth with async
url <- "https://hb.opencpu.org/basic-auth/user/passwd"
auth <- auth(user = "user", pwd = "passwd")
reqlist <- list(
  HttpRequest$new(url = url, auth = auth)$get(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = url, auth = auth)$get(query = list(a=5)),
  HttpRequest$new(url = url, auth = auth)$get(query = list(b=3))
)
out <- AsyncVaried$new(.list = reqlist)
out$request()
out$status()
out$parse()

# failure behavior
## e.g. when a URL doesn't exist, a timeout, etc.
reqlist <- list(
  HttpRequest$new(url = "http://stuffthings.gvb")$get(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org")$head(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org",
   opts = list(timeout_ms = 10))$head()
)
(tmp <- AsyncVaried$new(.list = reqlist))
tmp$request()
tmp$responses()
tmp$parse("UTF-8")

# access intemediate redirect headers
dois <- c("10.7202/1045307ar", "10.1242/jeb.088898", "10.1121/1.3383963")
reqlist <- list(
  HttpRequest$new(url = paste0("https://doi.org/", dois[1]))$get(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = paste0("https://doi.org/", dois[2]))$get(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = paste0("https://doi.org/", dois[3]))$get()
)
tmp <- AsyncVaried$new(.list = reqlist)
tmp$request()
tmp
lapply(tmp$responses(), "[[", "response_headers_all")

# retry
reqlist <- list(
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/get")$get(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/post")$post(),
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/status/404")$retry("get"),
  HttpRequest$new(url = "https://hb.opencpu.org/status/429")$retry("get",
   retry_only_on = c(403, 429), times = 2)
)
tmp <- AsyncVaried$new(.list = reqlist)
tmp
tmp$request()
tmp$responses()[[3]]
} # }