Typically to deal with HTTP I just use curl(1), but it is possible to make HTTP requests using the sockets vocabulary. It's just a pain to do so as HTTP has a lot of annoyances. This example provides a way to make HTTP requests using only RETRO. First, some variables. I'll keep the socket handle in `Socket` and the number of bytes read in `Read`. ~~~ 'Socket var 'Read var ~~~ Since HTTP allows for a large number of response headers with various sizes and ordering, skipping them can be annoying. I do care about one: the Content-Length: result. I'll track the number of sequential newlines in a variable named `Seq`, the value for Content-Length in `Length`, and then the current response line in `Line`. As a bonus annoyance, HTTP doesn't limit the size of any particular header line, so I need to allocate enough space to cover anything it throws at me. Per a stackoverflow posting at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/686217/maximum-on-http-header-values I'll need at least 8KiB, so: ~~~ 'Length var 'Seq var 'Line var #8192 allot ~~~ Then skipping the headers is a matter of reading lines until two newlines are encountered. ~~~ :read-byte here #1 @Socket socket:recv drop-pair here fetch ; :append dup buffer:add ; :eol? [ ASCII:LF eq? ] [ ASCII:CR eq? ] bi or ; :is-length? &Line 'Content-Length:_ s:begins-with? ; :process &Line s:trim #16 + s:to-number !Length ; :next &Line buffer:set ; :yes &Seq v:inc ; :no #0 !Seq ; :check [ yes is-length? [ process ] if next ] [ no ] choose ; :read-line read-byte append eol? check ; :done? @Seq #4 eq? ; :skip-headers [ &Line buffer:set [ read-line done? ] until ] buffer:preserve ; ~~~ Now on to making the actual request to the server. An HTTP GET request takes a minimal form like: GET HTTP/1.1 Host: domain So I begin by writing a word to parse a URL. It'll store pointers to the parts in the `Host` and `Request` variables. This is pretty easy. I increase the starting point by 7 to skip over the HTTP:// part and then split on the first / character to separate the domain and requested file. ~~~ 'Host var 'Request var :parse-url #7 + $/ s:split/char s:keep !Host s:keep !Request ; ~~~ Given that, making a request is simply: ~~~ :make-request @Host @Request 'GET_%s_HTTP/1.1\r\nHost:_%s\r\n\r\n s:format @Socket socket:send drop-pair ; ~~~ Moving on to reading the body, this is just reading bytes and shoving them into a buffer. I use the `Read` variable to track the number of bytes read, stopping when this reaches the `Length` extracted from the headers. ~~~ :read-byte here #1 @Socket socket:recv drop-pair here fetch buffer:add ; :read-body [ &Read v:inc read-byte @Read @Length eq? ] until ; ~~~ And finally tieing this all together: ~~~ :http:get (as-n) parse-url #0 !Seq #0 !Read socket:create !Socket @Host '80 socket:configure @Socket socket:connect drop-pair [ buffer:set make-request skip-headers read-body ] buffer:preserve @Read ; ~~~ And a test case: ``` 'Body d:create #90000 allot &Body 'http://pestilenz.org/~ckeen/blog/posts/ciy-manifesto.html http:get &Body s:put ```