Literals

http4s is a bit more strict with handling URIs than e.g. the play http client. Instead of passing plain Strings, http4s operates on URIs. You can construct literal URI with

import org.http4s._
// import org.http4s._

val uri = Uri.uri("http://http4s.org")
// uri: org.http4s.Uri = http://http4s.org

Building URIs

Naturally, that’s not enough if you want dynamic URIs. There’s a few different ways to build URIs, you can either use a predefined URI and call methods on it, or you could use the URLTemplates.

URI

Use the methods on the uri class.

val docs = uri.withPath("/docs/0.15")
// docs: org.http4s.Uri = https://http4s.org/docs/0.15

val docs2 = uri / "docs" / "0.15"
// docs2: org.http4s.Uri = https://http4s.org/docs/0.15

assert(docs == docs2)

URI Template

import org.http4s.UriTemplate._
// import org.http4s.UriTemplate._

import org.http4s.syntax.string._
// import org.http4s.syntax.string._

val template = UriTemplate(
  authority = Some(Uri.Authority(host = Uri.RegName("http4s.org"))),
  scheme = Some("http".ci),
  path = List(PathElm("docs"), PathElm("0.15"))
)
// template: org.http4s.UriTemplate = https://http4s.org/docs/0.15

template.toUriIfPossible
// res1: scala.util.Try[org.http4s.Uri] = Success(https://http4s.org/docs/0.15)

Receiving URIs

URIs come in as strings from external routes or as data. Http4s provides encoders/decoders for Uri in the connector packages. If you want to build your own, use Uri.fromString.

For example one for knobs:

implicit val configuredUri = Configured[String].flatMap(s => Configured(_ => Uri.fromString(s).toOption))