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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. This can be in a few potential formatsThe HTTP formats will typically be specified by the API you’re working with and often requires the appropriate Content-Type header. Common 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>

Query String format

Code Block
patientid=33751&status=active&firstname=Bruce&lastname=Wayne

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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