BEGIN_REQUEST Function

This functions begins a new HTTP request. UTL_HTTP establishes the network connection to the target Web server or the proxy server and sends the HTTP request line. The PL/SQL program continues the request by calling some other API to complete the request.

Syntax

UTL_HTTP.begin_request (

url  IN VARCHAR2,
method  IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT 'GET',
http_version  IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL)

RETURN req;

Parameters

Table 78-26 shows the parameters for the BEGIN_REQUEST function.

Table 78-26 BEGIN_REQUEST Function Parameters

Parameter	Description
url (IN)	The URL of the HTTP request
method (IN)	The method performed on the resource identified by the URL
http_version (IN)	The HTTP protocol version that sends the request. The format of the protocol version is HTTP/major-version.minor-version, where major-version and minor-version are positive numbers. If this parameter is set to NULL, UTL_HTTP uses the latest HTTP protocol version that it supports to send the request. The latest version that the package supports is 1.1 and it can be upgraded to a later version. The default is NULL.

Usage Notes

The URL passed as an argument to this function is not examined for illegal characters, such as spaces, according to URL specification RFC 2396. You should escape those characters with the UTL_URL package to return illegal and reserved characters. URLs should consist of US-ASCII characters only. See Chapter 84, "UTL_URL" for a list of legal characters in URLs. Note that URLs should consist of US-ASCII characters only. The use of non-US-ASCII characters in a URL is generally unsafe.

An Oracle wallet must be set before accessing Web servers over HTTPS. See the set_wallet procedure on how to set up an Oracle wallet.