R Academy · Lesson

Making HTTP Requests with httr2

Send GET and POST requests, handle headers, and process responses.

Introduction to httr2

httr2 is the modern R package for HTTP requests, succeeding httr. It uses a pipe-based builder pattern: start with request(url), add modifiers, then execute with req_perform().

library(httr2)

# Basic GET request pattern:
# request(url)     -> create request object
# |> req_*()       -> modify request
# |> req_perform() -> send request
# |> resp_*()      -> extract from response

# Minimal example (requires internet):
# resp <- request('https://httpbin.org/get') |>
#   req_perform()
# resp_status(resp)     # 200
# resp_body_json(resp)  # parsed JSON body

cat('httr2 follows: build -> perform -> extract')

request() and req_perform()

request(url) creates a request object. req_perform() executes it and returns a response object. The response can then be inspected with resp_* functions.

library(httr2)

# Build and send a GET request
# resp <- request('https://httpbin.org/get') |>
#   req_perform()

# Inspect response
# resp_status(resp)          # 200
# resp_status_desc(resp)     # 'OK'
# resp_headers(resp)         # list of headers
# resp_header(resp, 'content-type')  # single header
# resp_body_string(resp)     # raw body as string
# resp_body_json(resp)       # parsed JSON
# resp_body_raw(resp)        # raw bytes

cat('Response hierarchy:')
cat('status -> headers -> body')

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