HTTP Client

The Client trait in http4s can submit a Request to a server and return a Response.

trait Client[F[_]] {

  def run(req: Request[F]): Resource[F, Response[F]]

  //...
}

While Client is abstract in its effect type F, we will use concrete IO throughout this guide.

Let's briefly chat about the Resource wrapping the return type. Every request/response pair is transmitted over a connection, which is a finite resource. When you are done reading the Response, you return from the Resource. This releases the connection so that it may be re-used by another request/response pair, or shutdown.

Here's a quick example app to print the response of a GET request.

import cats.effect.{IO, IOApp}
import org.http4s.ember.client.EmberClientBuilder
import org.http4s.client.Client

object Hello extends IOApp.Simple {

  def printHello(client: Client[IO]): IO[Unit] =
    client
      .expect[String]("http://localhost:8080/hello/Ember")
      .flatMap(IO.println)

  val run: IO[Unit] = EmberClientBuilder
    .default[IO]
    .build
    .use(client => printHello(client))

}

Setup

In order to play with a Client we'll first create an http4s Server.

Ensure you have the following dependencies in your build.sbt:

scalaVersion := "2.13.15" // Also supports 2.12.x and 3.x

val http4sVersion = "0.23.30"

libraryDependencies ++= Seq(
  "org.http4s" %% "http4s-ember-client" % http4sVersion,
  "org.http4s" %% "http4s-ember-server" % http4sVersion,
  "org.http4s" %% "http4s-dsl"          % http4sVersion,
)

Now we can finish setting up our server:

import com.comcast.ip4s._
import org.http4s._
import org.http4s.dsl.io._
import org.http4s.implicits._
import org.http4s.ember.server.EmberServerBuilder
import org.http4s.server.middleware.Logger

val app = HttpRoutes.of[IO] {
  case GET -> Root / "hello" / name =>
    Ok(s"Hello, $name.")
}.orNotFound

val finalHttpApp = Logger.httpApp(true, true)(app)

val server = EmberServerBuilder
  .default[IO]
  .withHost(ipv4"0.0.0.0")
  .withPort(port"8080")
  .withHttpApp(finalHttpApp)
  .build



Because this documentation is running in mdoc we need an implicit IORuntime to let us run our IO values explicitly with .unsafeRunSync(). In real code you should construct your whole program in IO and assign it to run in IOApp as in the example above.

import cats.effect.unsafe.IORuntime
implicit val runtime: IORuntime = IORuntime.global

If you are following along in a REPL you will need to start the server in the background. Additionally you will want a way to shutdown the server when you're done.

You can do this by starting the server like so:

val shutdown = server.allocated.unsafeRunSync()._2

Later you can call shutdown.unsafeRunSync() to run the server's finalizers and release resources.

Making Requests

Creating the client

A good default choice is the EmberClientBuilder. The EmberClientBuilder sets up a connection pool, enabling the reuse of connections for multiple requests, supports HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2, and is available for ScalaJS.

import org.http4s.ember.client.EmberClientBuilder

EmberClientBuilder
  .default[IO]
  .build
  .use { client =>
    // use `client` here, returning an `IO`.
    client.expect[String]("http://localhost:8080/hello/Ember")
}

In the above example .build returns a Resource[IO, Client]. We use the Client by passing use a function Client => IO[B]. The result is a value that, when run, will acquire a Client, use it, and release it (even under cancellation or errors).

Note that we generally only call .build.use once per application and pass around the Client. See the Quick Start g8 template for an example.

For the remainder of this tutorial, we'll use an alternate client backend built on the standard java.net library client. Unlike the ember client, it does not need to be shut down. Like the ember-client, and any other http4s backend, it presents the exact same Client interface!

It uses blocking I/O and is not suited for production, but it is highly useful in a REPL or mdoc documentation:

import org.http4s.client.JavaNetClientBuilder

// for REPL or mdoc use only!
val httpClient: Client[IO] = JavaNetClientBuilder[IO].create

Describing a Request

To execute a GET request, we can call expect with the type we expect and the URI we want:

val helloEmber: IO[String] =
  httpClient.expect[String]("http://localhost:8080/hello/Ember")

We don't have any output from the server yet as we have not executed the request. We have an IO[String] value, which is a description of a program that, when run, will send a GET request to the server, and expect a plain text String response.

Let's build another program that makes requests in parallel to greet a collection of people:

import cats.effect.IO
import cats.syntax.all._
import org.http4s.Uri

def hello(name: String): IO[String] = {
  val target = uri"http://localhost:8080/hello/" / name
  httpClient.expect[String](target)
}

val inputs = List("Ember", "http4s", "Scala")

val getGreetings: IO[List[String]] =
  inputs.parTraverse(hello)

We use parTraverse to apply hello to each name and collect the results into one IO[List[String]]. The par prefix (as in "parallel") on parTraverse indicates that this will happen concurrently not sequentially.

Running a Request

We have built two programs: helloEmber will make a single request to get a greeting for Ember, and getGreetings will make multiple concurrent requests getting multiple greetings. In a production application we would likely compose these programs with other programs up until we finally pass them to run in IOApp as seen in our intro example.

Here in mdoc, or in a REPL, we manually run the IO with unsafeRunSync(). Remember, you should not do this in your applications.

helloEmber.unsafeRunSync()
// res1: String = "Hello, Ember."

getGreetings.unsafeRunSync()
// res2: List[String] = List(
//   "Hello, Ember.",
//   "Hello, http4s.",
//   "Hello, Scala."
// )

Constructing a URI

Typically, to construct a Request, you use a Uri to represent the endpoint you want to access.

There are a number of ways to construct a Uri.

If you have a literal string, you can use the uri string interpolator:

uri"https://my-awesome-service.com/foo/bar?wow=yeah"
// res3: Uri = Uri(
//   scheme = Some(value = Scheme(https)),
//   authority = Some(
//     value = Authority(
//       userInfo = None,
//       host = RegName(host = my-awesome-service.com),
//       port = None
//     )
//   ),
//   path = /foo/bar,
//   query = wow=yeah,
//   fragment = None
// )

This only works with literal strings because it uses a macro to validate the URI format at compile-time.

Otherwise, you'll need to use Uri.fromString(...) and handle the case where validation fails:

val validUri = "https://my-awesome-service.com/foo/bar?wow=yeah"
val invalidUri = "yeah whatever"

val uri: ParseResult[Uri] = Uri.fromString(validUri)
// uri: ParseResult[Uri] = Right(
//   value = Uri(
//     scheme = Some(value = Scheme(https)),
//     authority = Some(
//       value = Authority(
//         userInfo = None,
//         host = RegName(host = my-awesome-service.com),
//         port = None
//       )
//     ),
//     path = /foo/bar,
//     query = wow=yeah,
//     fragment = None
//   )
// )

val parseFailure: ParseResult[Uri] = Uri.fromString(invalidUri)
// parseFailure: ParseResult[Uri] = Left(
//   value = ParseFailure(
//     sanitized = "Invalid URI",
//     details = """yeah whatever
//     ^
// expectation:
// * must end the string"""
//   )
// )

You can also build up a URI incrementally, e.g.:

val baseUri: Uri = uri"http://foo.com"
val withPath: Uri = baseUri.withPath(path"/bar/baz")
val withQuery: Uri = withPath.withQueryParam("hello", "world")

Middleware

Like the server middleware, the client middleware is a wrapper around a Client that provides a means of accessing or manipulating Requests and Responses being sent.

Consider functions from Int to String. We could create a wrapper over functions of this type, which would take an Int => String and return an Int => String.

Such a wrapper could make the result inspect its input, do something to it, and call the original function with that input (or even another one). Then it could look at the response and also make some actions based on it.

An example wrapper could look something like this:

def mid(f: Int => String): Int => String = in => {
  // `in` is the input originally passed to the function.
  // We can pass it to `f` directly.
  // Or use it to construct a new value.
  val resultOfF = f(in + 1)

  // `resultOfF` is the result of the function applied to the new input.
  // Similarly, we can return it directly, or build a new value.
  s"$in was incremented to yield $resultOfF"
}

If we wrap a simple function, say, one returning the String representation of a number:

val f1: Int => String = _.toString
// f1: Int => String = <function1>

// Here, we're applying our wrapper to `f1`. Notice that this is still a function.
val f2: Int => String = mid(f1)
// f2: Int => String = <function1>

f1(10)
// res4: String = "10"
f2(10)
// res5: String = "10 was incremented to yield 11"

We see how f2 wraps f1 by passing an incremented argument to the original function. This wrapper could be considered a middleware over functions from Int to String.

Recall our simplified definition of Client[F] - it boils down to a single abstract method:

trait Client[F[_]] {
  def run(request: Request[F]): Resource[F, Response[F]]
}

Knowing this, we could say a Client[F] is equivalent to a function from Request[F] to Resource[F, Response[F]]. In fact, given a client, we could call client.run _ to get that function.

A client middleware follows the same idea as our original middleware did: it takes a Client (which is a function) and returns another Client (which is also a function).

It can see the input Request[F] that we pass to the client when we call it, it can modify that request, pass it to the underlying client (or any other client, really!), and do all sorts of other things, including effects - all it has to do is return a Resource[F, Response[F]].

The real definition of Client is a little more complicated because there's several more abstract methods. If you want to implement a client using just a function (for example, to make a middleware), consider using Client.apply.

A simple middleware, which would add a constant header to every request and response, could look like this:

import cats.effect.MonadCancelThrow
import org.typelevel.ci._

def addTestHeader[F[_]: MonadCancelThrow](underlying: Client[F]): Client[F] = Client[F] { req =>
  underlying
    .run(
      req.withHeaders(Header.Raw(ci"X-Test-Request", "test"))
    )
    .map(
      _.withHeaders(Header.Raw(ci"X-Test-Response", "test"))
    )
}

As the caller of the client you would get from this, you would see the extra header in the response. Similarly, every service called by the client would see an extra header in the requests.

Included Middleware

Http4s includes some middleware Out of the Box in the org.http4s.client.middleware package. These include:

Following of redirect responses (Follow Redirect)
Retrying of requests (Retry)
Metrics gathering (Metrics)
Logging of requests (Request Logger)
Logging of responses (Response Logger)
Logging of requests and responses (Logger)

Metrics Middleware

Apart from the middleware mentioned in the previous section. There is, as well, Out of the Box middleware for Dropwizard and Prometheus metrics.

Examples

Send a GET request

You can send a GET by calling the expect method on the client, passing a Uri:

httpClient.expect[String](uri"https://google.com/")

If you need to do something more complicated like setting request headers, you can build up a request object and pass that to expect:

import cats.effect.IO
import org.http4s.Request
import org.http4s.Headers
import org.http4s.headers._
import org.http4s.MediaType

val request = Request[IO](
  method = Method.GET,
  uri = uri"https://my-lovely-api.com/",
  headers = Headers(
    Authorization(Credentials.Token(AuthScheme.Bearer, "open sesame")),
    Accept(MediaType.application.json),
  )
)

httpClient.expect[String](request)

Send a POST request

You can send a POST request and decode the JSON response into a case class by deriving an EntityDecoder for that case class:

import cats.effect.IO
import org.http4s.circe._
import io.circe.generic.auto._

case class AuthResponse(access_token: String)

implicit val authResponseEntityDecoder: EntityDecoder[IO, AuthResponse] = jsonOf

val postRequest = Request[IO](
  method = Method.POST, 
  uri = uri"https://my-lovely-api.com/oauth2/token"
).withEntity(
  UrlForm(
    "grant_type" -> "client_credentials",
    "client_id" -> "my-awesome-client",
    "client_secret" -> "s3cr3t"
  )
)

httpClient.expect[AuthResponse](postRequest)

Calls to a JSON API

Take a look at json.

Body decoding / encoding

The reusable way to decode or encode a request is to write a custom EntityDecoder or EntityEncoder. For that topic, take a look at entity.

If you prefer a more fine-grained approach, some of the methods on Client take a Response[F] => F[A] argument, such as get, which lets you add a function which includes the decoding functionality, but ignores the media type.

val endpoint = uri"http://localhost:8080/hello/Ember"
httpClient.get[Either[String, String]](endpoint) {
  case Status.Successful(r) => r.attemptAs[String].leftMap(_.message).value
  case r => r.as[String]
    .map(b => Left(s"Request failed with status ${r.status.code} and body $b"))
}

Your function has to consume the body before the returned F exits. Response.body yields a EntityBody which is a type alias for Stream[F, Byte]. It's this Stream that needs to be consumed within your effect F.

Do not do this:

import org.http4s.EntityBody

// response.body is not consumed within `F`
httpClient.get[EntityBody[IO]]("some-url")(response => IO(response.body))