http-verbs

http-verbs is a Scala library providing an interface to make asynchronous HTTP calls. The underlying implementation uses Play WS.

It encapsulates some common concerns for calling other HTTP services on the HMRC Tax Platform, including:

• Auditing
• Logging
• Propagation of common headers
• Response handling, converting failure status codes into a consistent set of exceptions - allows failures to be automatically propagated to the caller
• Request & Response de-serialization

Auditing is no longer part of http-verbs, please see docs for play-auditing for further info.

Adding to your build

In your SBT build add:

resolvers += Resolver.bintrayRepo("hmrc", "releases")

libraryDependencies += "uk.gov.hmrc" %% "http-verbs" % "x.x.x"

Usage

All examples show below are available in Examples.scala

Adding to your app

Each verb is available as both an agnostic Http___ trait and a play-specific WS___ trait. They can be used as mixins:

import uk.gov.hmrc.play.http._
import uk.gov.hmrc.play.http.ws._

trait ConnectorWithMixins extends HttpGet with HttpPost {
  
}

object ConnectorWithMixins extends ConnectorWithMixins with WSGet with WSPost {
  val appName = "my-app-name"
}

or as vals:

import uk.gov.hmrc.play.http._
import uk.gov.hmrc.play.http.ws._

trait ConnectorWithHttpValues {
  val http: HttpGet with HttpPost
}

object ConnectorWithHttpValues extends ConnectorWithHttpValues {
  val http = new WSGet with WSPost {
    val appName = "my-app-name"
  }
}

Making HTTP Calls

Each verb supplies a single matching method, which takes a URL, and a request body if appropriate:

implicit val hc = HeaderCarrier()

http.GET("http://gov.uk/hmrc")
http.DELETE("http://gov.uk/hmrc")
http.POST("http://gov.uk/hmrc", body = "hi there")
http.PUT("http://gov.uk/hmrc", body = "hi there")

All calls require an implicit HeaderCarrier.

Headers from the carrier are added to every request. Depending on how you scope your implicits, this could allow:

• Common headers to be configured for all requests
• Headers from an inbound call to be propagated to an outbound one (we do this by implicitly converting Play's Request into a HeaderCarrier)

Response Handling

All verbs return Futures. By default, a HttpResponse is returned for successful responses, which gives access to the status code, raw body and headers:

val r1 = http.GET("http://gov.uk/hmrc") // Returns an HttpResponse
val r2 = http.GET[HttpResponse]("http://gov.uk/hmrc") // Can specify this explicitly
r1.map { r =>
  r.status
  r.body
  r.allHeaders
}

Errors

To make microservice development simple, responses with non-200 status codes will cause a failed Future to be returned with a typed exception. This allows failures to be propagated back naturally.

Status Code	Exception
400	BadRequestException
404	NotFoundException
4xx	Upstream4xxResponse
5xx	Upstream5xxResponse

For all possible exception types, see the hmrc/http-exceptions project

If some failure status codes are expected in normal flow, recover can be used:

httpGet.GET("url") recover {
  case nf: NotFoundException => ...
  case se: Upstream5xxResponse => ...
}

or if you expect responses which indicate no content, you can use an Option[...] return type.

Response Types

http-verbs can automatically map responses into richer types.

JSON responses

If you have an implicit play.api.libs.json.Reads[A] for your type in scope, just specify that type and it will be automatically deserialised.

import play.api.libs.json._
case class MyCaseClass(a: String, b: Int)
implicit val f = Json.reads[MyCaseClass]
http.GET[MyCaseClass]("http://gov.uk/hmrc") // Returns an MyCaseClass de-serialised from JSON

HTML responses

If you wish to use HTML responses, Play's Html type can be used:

import play.twirl.api.Html
http.GET[Html]("http://gov.uk/hmrc") // Returns a Play Html type

Potentially empty responses

If you expect to receive a 204 or 404 response in some circumstances, then you can add Option[...] to your return type:

http.GET[Option[MyCaseClass]]("http://gov.uk/hmrc") // Returns None, or Some[MyCaseClass] de-serialised from JSON
http.GET[Option[Html]]("http://gov.uk/hmrc") // Returns a None, or a Play Html type

Extension & Customisation

Response handling is implemented via the HttpReads[A] typeclass, which is responsible for converting the raw response into either an exception or the specified type. Default implementations of HttpReads[A] have been provided in its companion object to cover common use cases, but clients may provide their own implementations if required.

Hooks

You can now set up http-verbs to run a series of callbacks when the future representing an http request completes - these are known as hooks. Hooks are used by play-auditing in order to wire up implicit auditing.

A hook looks like this:

object MyHook extends HttpHook {
  override def apply(url: String, verb: String, body: Option[_], responseF: Future[HttpResponse])(implicit hc: HeaderCarrier): Unit = {
    responseF.map {
      response => // do something on success
    }.recover {
      case e: Throwable => // do something on exception
    }
  }
}

And is registered with http-verbs like this:

object WSHttp extends WSGet with WSPut with WSPost with WSDelete with WSPatch {
  override val hooks = Seq(MyHook, AnotherHook)
  ...
  ...
}

License

This code is open source software licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.