Sun Microsystems 5.1.1 manual GET and Post Methods, Sample Http Exchange in Client Mode

Chapter 1	Section 1.2
Introducing the HTTPS eWay	About the HTTPS eWay

Cookie Expiration Date Checking

The HTTPS eWay checks time-limited cookies with expiration dates to ensure that they have not expired. If they have expired, the cookie is removed and is not resent to the originating server. As a result, the session state is removed.

The following standard expiration date formats are recognized by the HTTPS eWay:

"Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT" ;RFC 822, updated by RFC 1123 "Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT";RFC 850, obsoleted by RFC 1036 "Sunday, 06-Nov-1994 08:49:37 GMT";RFC 1036

"Sun Nov 6 08:49:37 1994" ;ANSI C's asctime()

If the expiration date is in another format, the eWay does not recognize the expiration date. Instead, it treats the cookie as if it does not have an expiration date.

1.2.3GET and POST Methods

The GET method can be used in client mode to retrieve a page specified by the URL or to retrieve information from a form-based Web page by submitting URL-encoded key and name value pairs. In the latter case, the page must support the GET method.

The following example shows a URL-encoded query string:

http://.../bin/query?p=seebeyond+integrator

The URL specifies the search page and the name-value pair for the search. The question mark (?) indicates the beginning of the name-value pair encoding. In the previous example, the name portion of the query is “p,” and the value to search is “seebeyond integrator.” A query can consist of one or more of these name-value pairs.

Note: See the official HTTP Specification for complete information.

The POST method is more versatile, in that it supports form-based requests, as well as sending large amounts of data. The POST method does not have the size-limitation maximum of 255 or 1024 characters (depending on the Web server), which the GET method has. As with GET, the Web page must support the POST method in order to use POST.

Taking the previous URL as an example, if you specify the following URL:

http://.../bin/query

Then, you can specify the name-value pair separately. The HTTP client allows for the specification of the URL and n-number of value pairs via its methods.

1.2.4Sample HTTP Exchange in Client Mode

To retrieve the file at the following URL:

http://www.myhost.com/path/file.html

First open a socket to the host www.myhost.com, port 80 (use the default port of 80 because none is specified in the URL). You can then send a request through a socket that looks like the following example:

HTTPS eWay Adapter User’s Guide 9 Sun Microsystems, Inc.