HttpClient

Simplified HTTP Client for Go.

HttpClient is designed to be the simplest way possible to make http requests. It sends an HTTP request and unmarshals json, xml, csv from the response in just one function call.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"log"

	"github.com/tamnd/httpclient"
)

type Person struct {
	ID        string
	FirstName string
	Gender    string
	LastName  string
	Link      string
	Locate    string
	Name      string
	Username  string
}

func main() {
	var mark Person
	err := httpclient.JSON("http://graph.facebook.com/4", &mark)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
	fmt.Printf("%#v\n", mark)
}

Output:

main.Person{ID:"4", FirstName:"", Gender:"male", LastName:"", Link:"https://www.facebook.com/zuck", Locate:"", Name:"Mark Zuckerberg", Username:"zuck"}

Why I made it?

Because I'm tired of typing the following code again and again:

resp, err := http.Get("http://api.example.com")
if err != nil {
	return nil, err
}
defer resp.Body.Close()

decoder := json.NewDecoder(resp.Body)

var data ...
err := decoder.Decode(&data)
if err != nil {
	return nil, err
}
return &data, nil

It's better to wrap all the above code in a function and call it when you need send GET request and parse the response as JSON.

When to use it?

Just use this package when you need to make some very simple HTTP GET requests then unmarshal the response body as json, xml, etc. If you need more than that, just use net/http, it is an excellent package, and has all things you need.
The better way is think that this package is just a collection of some code snippets. Feel free to open client.go and copy/paste just the code you need.

Is it any good?

May be.

Features

Get and unmarshal JSON from a url
Get and unmarshal XML from a url
Download multipe files concurrency

Install

$ go get github.com/tamnd/httpclient

Usage

import "github.com/tamnd/httpclient"

How to

Get String
Get Bytes
Get JSON
Get XML
Get Reader
Download Files
Send POST Request
Upload Files
Custom Request Header

Get String

func String(url string) (string, error)

String fetches the specified URL and returns the response body as a string.

content, err := httpclient.String("http://www.example.com")

Get Bytes

func Bytes(url string) ([]byte, error)

Bytes fetches the specified url and returns the response body as bytes.

bytes, err := httpclient.Bytes("http://www.example.com")

Get JSON

func JSON(url string, v interface{}) error

JSON issues a GET request to a specified URL and unmarshal json data from the response body.

var user = struct {
    ID        string `json:"id"`
    Gender    string `json:"gender"`
    Link      string `json:"link"`
    Name      string `json:"name"`
    Username  string `json:"username"`
}{}
err := httpclient.JSON("http://graph.facebook.com/4", &user)

Download Files

func Download(urls []string, files *[]File) error

Download downloads multiple files concurrency.

urls := []string{
	"http://www.golang.org",
	"http://www.clojure.org",
	"http://www.erlang.org",
}
var files *[]httpclient.File
err := httpclient.Download(urls, files)

Get Reader from Response

func Reader(url string) (io.ReadCloser, error)

Reader issues a GET request to a specified URL and returns an reader from the response body.

tamnd/httpclient