The http connector can be used to send and receive mule events over http. It has a https connector used for http communication over ssl.

The javadoc for this transport provider can be found here. And the Source Xref can be found here

Http Connector Properties

See Tcp Provider for extra properties inherited by this connector.

Https Connector Properties

In addition to the above properties for the https connector you can also configure server and client certificate information. You will need to use the org.mule.providers.http.HttpsConnector in you Xml config file when configuring the connector.

Endpoints

Http endpoints are described as socket-based endpoints in the form of -

http://localhost:1234

To use https instead you need to change the endpoint URI protocol and set the necessary certificate information listed above -

https://localhost:1234

Unlike http endpoints you can't use https endpoints without having a https connector declared in your configuration. The https connector class is org.mule.providers.http.HttpsConnector.

Endpoint Properties

Any Http Response Header values can be added as endpoint properties. The following is a short list of some of the most usefull properties.

The following is a short example, depicting how to set these properties on the endpoint.

<endpoint address="http://localhost:8080/mine" synchronous="true">
	<properties>
		<property name="Content-Type" value="text/html"/>
		<property name="Location" value="http://mule.codehaus.org/"/>
		<property name="http.status" value="307"/>
	</properties>
</endpoint>

In this case, the type of the payload is that of text/html & we are also instructing the client to redirect ('http.status' being set to 307 = temporary redirection) to "http://mule.codehause.org".

Security

If you want to secure requests to your Http endpoint the http connector supports Http Basic/Digest authentication methods (as well as the Mule generic header authentication). If you want to configure Http Basic you need to configure a Security Endpoint Filter on a http endpoint.

<endpoint address="http://localhost:4567">
    <security-filter
        className="org.mule.extras.acegi.filters.http.HttpBasicAuthenticationFilter">
        <properties>
            <property name="realm" value="mule-realm"/>
        </properties>
    </security-filter>
</endpoint>

You'll need to configure a security manager on the Mule instance for this security filter to authenticate against. For information about security configuration options and examples see Mule Security.

For general information about Endpoint configuration see Mule Endpoints.

Sending Credentials

If you want to make a Http request that requires authentication, you can set the credentials on the endpoint -

http://user:[email protected]/secure

Polling Http Services

The Http transport supports Polling a Http URL, this is useful to grab periodic data from a page that changes of to invoke a REST service such as polling an Amazon Queue.

To configure the Http Polling receiver you must include a HttpConnector configuration in your MuleXml.

<connector name="pollingHttp" className="org.mule.providers.http.HttpConnector">
    <properties>
        <map name="serviceOverrides">
            <property name="message.receiver" value="
              org.mule.providers.http.PollingHttpMessageReceiver"/>
        </map>
    </properties>
</connector>

To use the connectore in you endpoints use -

http://anothercompany.com/services?connector=pollingHttp&pollingFrequency=30000

The equivilent explict enpoint configuration would look like -

<endpoint address="http://anothercompany.com/services" connector="pollingHttp">
    <properties>
        <property name="pollingFrequency" value="30000"/>
    </properties>
</endpoint>

Transformers

The following transformers are used by default for this connector unless a transformer is explicitly set on the provider.

TODO
inbound, outbound and configuring response transformers

Handling HTTP Content-Type and Encoding

Sending HTTP (since Mule 1.3 RC2)

This is both for sending POST request bodies as a client and when returning a response body:

If we have a String, char[], Reader or similar:

• If the endpoint has an encoding explicitly set, use that
• Otherwise take it from the MuleMessage's property Content-Type
• If none of these are set, use the MuleManager's configuration default.
• For Content-Type, send the MuleMessage's property _Content-Type_but with the actual encoding set.
  (and splice it with the Content-Type, if need be)
• If Content-Type property is set, send text/plain (or perhaps auto-detect XML?)

For binary content, encoding is not relevant. Content-Type is set as follows:

• If the "Content-Type" property as set on the message, send that.
• Send "application/octet-stream" as Content-Type if none is set on the message.

Receiving HTTP (since Mule 1.3 RC2)

This is both for receiving POST requests (as server) and when getting the response bodies as a client:

If Content-Type header is received:

• Set on the message's property Content-Type
• For text content (starts with "text/"), decode the payload to a String, using the specified encoding.
• If no encoding is set, use ISO-8859-1 as is default in HTTP for text content, unless the encoding is explicitly on the endpoint.

If the Content-Type header is not present:

• Don't set the "Content-Type" property.
• Load as byte oriented payload.