Chapter 5. Network I/O and Web Services

5.0. Introduction

More and more these days, it seems like every system we build has to talk to something, somewhere.[16] We’d hardly be doing anything if we didn’t actually talk with some other computers over some kind of network.

This chapter covers all of the normal remote communication modes you would expect—HTTP, TCP, UDP, and the like—as well as some relative newcomers[17] like message-oriented architectures.

5.1. Making HTTP Requests

by John Cromartie

Problem

You want to make a simple HTTP GET or POST request.

Solution

Use slurp to make simple HTTP GET requests:

(slurp "http://example.com")
;; -> "<!doctype html>\n<html>\n<head>\n    <title>Example Domain</title> ...

Use the clj-http library to make GET, POST, and other requests with specific parameters or headers, to handle redirects and other special circumstances, or to get specific details about the response.

To follow along, add [clj-http "0.7.7"] to your project’s dependencies, or use lein-try to start a REPL:

$ lein try clj-http

Use clj-http.client/get to make GET requests:

(require '[clj-http.client :as http])

(:status (http/get "http://clojure.org"))
;; -> 200

(-> (http/get "http://clojure.org")
    :headers
    (get "server"))
;; -> "nginx"

(-> (http/get "http://www.amazon.com/")
    :cookies
    keys)
;; -> ("session-id" "session-id-time" "x-wl-uid" "skin")

Parameters can be included in both GET and POST requests. Use clj-http.client/post to make POST requests:

(http/get "http://google.com/" {:query-params ...

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