BoltHTTP
BoltHTTP is a HTTP client for CFML, it is a CFC that wraps the Apache HttpComponents java library. You can use the bolthttp CFC instead of CFHTTP when making HTTP requests within CFML.
How do I use it?
Here's a simple example:
bolt = new bolthttp();
response = bolt.request(url="http://httpbin.org/robots.txt", method="GET");
writeOutput(response.fileContent);
The return value of request value is a struct that contains keys mostly compatibale with what the cfhttp tag would return.
The request method has the following signature:
request(string url, string method="GET", array params=[], boolean close=true, struct options={})
url the url to request, the only required argument.
method the HTTP request method
params similar to the cfhttpparam tag, an array of structs for headers, formfields, etc. For example passing a header you would use [{type="header", name="X-MyHeader", value="My Value"}]
close when true it closes the internal HTTP Client for you once the request is complete, this means that you need to create another instance of bolthttp if you want to make a subsequent request, or set it to false and call getHttpClient().close() when you are done with the instance.
options a struct of request level options. Currently supported options are: maxredirects redirect sockettimeout connecttimeout and connectrequesttimeout
Advanced Usage
The response struct also contains a key httpResponse which is an instance of a org.apache.http.HttpResponse object. You should be able to get any part of the HTTP response you need from this object.
If you want to only work with the HttpResponse object instead of using the request() method of bolthttp you can use the rawRequest() method which only returns the HttpResponse object. Using rawRequest instead of request().httpResponse will offer better performance becauase it does not need to parse the response object to build the struct.
System Requirements
It requires Java 1.7 and ColdFusion 9 or greater or Lucee 4.5+
The requirement of ColdFusion 9+ is mainly due to it being written as a script based CFC, if you convert it to a tag based CFC it would probably run on CF8 or below as well.
Why use it?
- Consistent implementation of CFHTTP across various CFML engine versions.
- Ability to use TLS 1.2 on ColdFusion 9
- Friendly for script based code