Working with HTTP Requests

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 FHIR API request:

screenshot

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:

GET - query or retrieve resources.
POST - to add or create a resource.
PUT - update an existing resource.
DELETE - remove a resource.

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.

For GET requests, the URL may also contain any necessary query parameters like the id of the patient you are searching for.

3) Header - the metadata providing information about the request

The header includes metadata requirements defined by the API to provide information about the request. This can contain information such as:

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

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 JSON, XML, or Query String format.