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A request is an action we send to interact with a web service, whether you are authenticating or interacting with the resource server. Working with requests is required if Iguana is acting as either the:

Client - building requests to be sent to the Server.
Server - listening for incoming requests and parsing them for processing.

HTTP requests are made up of four parts. Take this example client request to a FHIR API request: screenshot

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title	1) Method - the action to be performed on a resource

The method indicates the action to be performed on a resource within the API.

With Iguana’s net.http.* library, you can invoke different HTTP methods:

net.http.get{} - query or retrieve resources.
net.http.post{} - to add or create a resource.
net.http.put{} - update an existing resource.
net.http.delete{} - remove a resource.

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title	2) Endpoint - the URL where the resource is found

The URL defines where the client can access the desired resources - for example the Patient resource.

Code Block
url='http://hapi.fhir.org/baseR4/Patient'

Query String:

For GET requests, the URL may also contain any necessary query parameters like the id of the patient you are searching for. . The ? indicates the end of the url and beginning of the parameters. Key-value pairs are separated by &.

Code Block
http://hapi.fhir.org/baseR4/Patient?id=12324&name=Bruce

These URLs can be hardcoded if necessary, or built using various URL Encoding strategies.

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title	3) Header - the metadata providing information about the request

The header includes metadata requirements defined by the API to provide information about the request.

Code Block
headers= { ['Content-Type'] = 'application/fhir+json', ['Authorization'] = 'Bearer '..token }

This can contain information such as:

Connection and content types
Authentication information like credentials, cookies, or an access token
MIME types
Entity tags (ETAGS)

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title	4) Body - the payload of the request, containing the content to be sent

Some requests (PUT and POST) require a body where we add the resource content or additional information to be sent to the server. The HTTP formats will typically be specified by the API you’re working with and often requires the appropriate Content-Type header. This can be in a JSON, XML, or Query String formatCommon formats include:

JSON

Code Block

language	json

[{
    "patientid": "33751",
    "status": "active",
    "firstname": ”Bruce",
    "lastname": ”Wayne",
	...
}]

See Parsing and Serializing JSON.

XML

Code Block

language	xml

<patient>
  <patientid>33751</patientid>
   <status>active</status>
   <firstname>Bruce</firstname>
   <lastname>Wayne</lastname>
</patient>

See Working with XML

Form Data

Code Block

language	lua

local formData = {
      ["file"] = "@/path/to/file.txt",
      ["name"] = "Bruce Wayne",
      ["email"] = "bruce.wayne@example.com"
   }

Form data for data sent from a web form. Typically handled in Lua using string or table functions, storing data as name-value pairs.

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