NAME

Test::HTTP::LocalServer - spawn a local HTTP server for testing

SYNOPSIS

use HTTP::Tiny;
my $server = Test::HTTP::LocalServer->spawn(
    request_pause => 1, # wait one second before accepting the next request
);

my $res = HTTP::Tiny->new->get( $server->url );
print $res->{content};

$server->stop;

DESCRIPTION

This module implements a tiny web server suitable for running "live" tests of HTTP clients against it. It also takes care of cleaning %ENV from settings that influence the use of a local proxy etc.

Use this web server if you write an HTTP client and want to exercise its behaviour in your test suite without talking to the outside world.

METHODS

Test::HTTP::LocalServer->spawn %ARGS

my $server = Test::HTTP::LocalServer->spawn;

This spawns a new HTTP server. The server will stay running until

$server->stop

is called. Ideally, you explicitly call ->stop or use

undef $server

before the main program ends so that the program exit code reflects the real exit code and not the chlid exit code.

Valid arguments are :

  • html => scalar containing the page to be served

    If this is not specified, an informative default page will be used.

  • request_pause => number of seconds to sleep before accepting the next request

    If your system is slow or needs to wait some time before a socket connection is ready again, use this parameter to make the server wait a bit before handling the next connection.

  • file => filename containing the page to be served

  • debug => 1 to make the spawned server output debug information

  • eval => string that will get evaluated per request in the server

    Try to avoid characters that are special to the shell, especially quotes. A good idea for a slow server would be

    eval => sleep+10

All served HTML will have the first %s replaced by the current location.

The following entries will be removed from %ENV when making a request:

HTTP_PROXY
http_proxy
HTTP_PROXY_ALL
http_proxy_all
HTTPS_PROXY
https_proxy
CGI_HTTP_PROXY
ALL_PROXY
all_proxy

$server->port

This returns the port of the current server. As new instances will most likely run under a different port, this is convenient if you need to compare results from two runs.

$server->url

This returns the URI where you can contact the server. This url is valid until the $server goes out of scope or you call

$server->stop;

The returned object is a copy that you can modify at your leisure.

$server->server_url

This returns the URI object of the server URL. Use "$server->url" instead. Use this object if you want to modify the hostname or other properties of the server object.

Consider this basically an emergency accessor. In about every case, using ->url() does what you want.

$server->stop

This stops the server process by requesting a special url.

$server->kill

This kills the server process via kill. The log cannot be retrieved then.

$server->get_log

This returns the output of the server process. This output will be a list of all requests made to the server concatenated together as a string.

$server->local

my $url = $server->local('foo.html');
# file:///.../foo.html

Returns an URL for a local file which will be read and served by the webserver. The filename must be a relative filename relative to the location of the current program.

URLs implemented by the server

arbitrary content $server->content($html)

$server->content(<<'HTML');
    <script>alert("Hello World");</script>
HTML

The URL will contain the HTML as supplied. This is convenient for supplying Javascript or special URL to your user agent.

download $server->download($name)

This URL will send a file with a Content-Disposition header and indicate the suggested filename as passed in.

302 redirect $server->redirect($target)

This URL will issue a redirect to $target. No special care is taken towards URL-decoding $target as not to complicate the server code. You need to be wary about issuing requests with escaped URL parameters.

401 basic authentication challenge $server->basic_auth($user, $pass)

This URL will issue a 401 basic authentication challenge. The expected user and password are encoded in the URL.

my $challenge_url = $server->basic_auth('foo','secret');
my $wrong_pw = URI->new( $challenge_url );
$wrong_pw->userinfo('foo:hunter2');
$res = HTTP::Tiny->new->get($wrong_pw);
is $res->{status}, 401, "We get the challenge with a wrong user/password";

404 error $server->error_notfound($target)

This URL will response with status code 404.

Timeout $server->error_timeout($seconds)

This URL will send a 599 error after $seconds seconds.

Timeout+close $server->error_close($seconds)

This URL will send nothing and close the connection after $seconds seconds.

Error in response content $server->error_after_headers

This URL will send headers for a successful response but will close the socket with an error after 2 blocks of 16 spaces have been sent.

Chunked response $server->chunked

This URL will return 5 blocks of 16 spaces at a rate of one block per second in a chunked response.

Surprisingly large bzip2 encoded response $server->bzip2

This URL will return a short HTTP response that expands to 16M body.

Surprisingly large gzip encoded response $server->gzip

This URL will return a short HTTP response that expands to 16M body.

Other URLs

All other URLs will echo back the cookies and query parameters.

EXPORT

None by default.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

Copyright (C) 2003-2024 Max Maischein

AUTHOR

Max Maischein, <corion@cpan.org>

Please contact me if you find bugs or otherwise improve the module. More tests are also very welcome !

SEE ALSO

WWW::Mechanize,WWW::Mechanize::Shell,WWW::Mechanize::Firefox