How do I read response headers + body from single POST using scala's dispatch lib

Question

Hi,

I have been trying to use the dispatch library to download a file via an http POST request. The server returns a "content-disposition" header suggesting a filename for the data file it returns.

I have succeeded reading the entire response body as a string,

http(r >~ { (x) => println(x.getLines.mkString("","\n","")) })

reading the response headers on their own

http(r >:> { (x) => println(x) })

and getting a BufferedReader for the response body

http(r >> { (x,c) => (new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(x,c))).readLine })

How would I go about getting the response headers AND the response body in one go using the dispatch lib? The docs are very sparse and I am new to Scala.

TIA

Michael

Answer 1

Dispatch uses Handlers to handle HTTP responses from a request. It provides several handy shortcuts for performing routine tasks, like the ones that you outlined in the question such as generating an InputStream, returning the content as a string, or looking at the headers of the response. There is also a method, >+, which composes two separate Handlers and executes them on the same request. Here's how you could solve your problem using that handler:

val ret = http(req >+ { r => (r as_str, r >:> { _("Content-Disposition") }) })

The return value is a Tuple2 which contains, in this case, a string which is the content of the web page and another string which is the value of the Content-Disposition header.