Scalahttp

Making HTTP Requests

Sometimes we would like to call other HTTP services from within a play application. Play supports this task via its play.api.libs.ws.WS library which provides a way to make asynchronous HTTP calls.

Any calls made by play.api.libs.ws.WS should return a play.api.libs.concurrent.Promise[play.api.libs.ws.Request] which we can later handle with play's asynchronous mechanisms.

A short introduction

Hello Get

import play.api.libs.ws._
//let's try to retrive the value from the promise within 5sec
val myfeed: Promise[Response] = WS.url("http://mysite.com").get()

val content: String = myfeed.await(5000).get.body

val content: xml.Elem = myfeed.await(5000).get.xml

val content: JsValue = myfeed.await(5000).get.json

val code = myfeed.await(5000).get.status

Hello Post

//send data as text
val content: String = WS.url("http://localhost:9001/post").post("content").await(5000).get.body
content must contain ("content")
content must contain("AnyContentAsText")

//or as x-www-application/form-urlencoded
val contentForm: String = WS.url("http://localhost:9001/post").post(Map("param1"->Seq("foo"))).await(5000).get.body
contentForm must contain ("AnyContentAsUrlFormEncoded")
contentForm must contain ("foo")

one also can add custom request and authentication headers and even a signature. For more information please see the api doc here