The http client will be started when the inets application is started and is then available to all processes on that erlang node. The client will spawn a new process to handle each request unless there is a possibility to pipeline a request. The client will add a host header and an empty te header if there are no such headers present in the request. The client supports ipv6 as long as the underlaying mechanisms also do so.
1 > application:start(inets). ok
Use the proxy "www-proxy.mycompany.com:8000", but not for requsts to localhost. This will apply to all subsequent requests
2 > http:set_options([{proxy, {{"www-proxy.mycompany.com", 8000}, ["localhost"]}}]). ok
An ordinary synchronous request.
2 > {ok, {{Version, 200, ReasonPhrase}, Headers, Body}} = http:request(get, {"http://www.erlang.org", []}, [], []).
An ordinary asynchronous request. The result will be sent to the calling process on the form {http, {ReqestId, Result}}
3 > {ok, RequestId} = http:request(get, {"http://www.erlang.org", []}, [], [{sync, false}]).
In this case the calling process is the shell, so we receive the result.
4 > receive {http, {RequestId, Result}} -> ok after 500 -> error end. ok
Send a request with a specified connection header.
5 > {ok, {{NewVersion, 200, NewReasonPhrase}, NewHeaders, NewBody}} = http:request(get, {"http://www.erlang.org", [{"connection", "close"}]}, [], []).