CURL and Perl (it rymes!)

[blue_cowdawg]

Fellow monks: I am in need of a nudge in the right direction.

I have a hosting provider that I use (VPS.Net) that provides a wonderful API using a RESTful service for access. They suggest CURL to enact this access. Here is one example of what their API documentation suggests:

curl -H 'Accept: application/json' -H 'Content-type: application/json'
+ -u [e-mail]:abc123ABC456== https://api.vps.net/virtual_machines.
+api10json

The provided example provides a list of the VPS-es that are part of your account in JSON format. The exact same call is used in POST with JSON as input to create a new VPS.

I can do the GET easy enough. I looked at the documentation for Curl::Easy and Curl::Simple and got a headache. Has anybody out there done anything similar and willing to show snippets of what you did?

Thanks in advance.

[Corion]

I would look at what HTTP requests Curl creates from that command line, and then recreate these HTTP::Requests for use with LWP::UserAgent. If Curl has no convenient way to show what it is sending, likely Wireshark or any other network sniffer will produce the data sent by Curl.

use HTTP::Request::Common;

my $virtual_machines = GET(
    'https://api.vps.net/virtual_machines.api10json',
    Accept => 'application/json',
    Content_Type => 'application/json',
);

# perform request, passing the credentials either in the URL or settin
+g up LWP::UserAgent
...
print $response->as_string;

Setting new values is likely done via POST:

use JSON;

my $new_values => [
    machine1 => 100,
    machine2 => 200,
    machine3 => 300,
    machine4 => 400,
];

my $set_virtual_machines = POST(
    'https://api.vps.net/virtual_machines.api10json',
    Accept => 'application/json',
    Content_Type => 'application/json',
    Content => [
        'magic_json_parameter_name' => encode_json($new_values ),
    ],
);

[JavaFan]

If you already know which options to give to curl, I'd just use curl and wouldn't spending the resources on rewriting it. Perl is a glue language afterall.