postgresql-http-client

Simple HTTP client inside your PostgreSQL. Easy to install. No compilation required: no gcc, no make && make install. Uses only standard extension available in any popular Linux distribution. Postgres 9.6+ is required.

Works very fast (see details). BUT: ⚠️ be careful calling external/unpredictable resources, because the population of Postgres backends on your server is about of the same size as the population of Siberian tigers.

Allows GET and POSTS requests in SQL environment:

test=> \x
Expanded display is on.
test=> select (get).* from http_client.get('http://ya.ru');
-[ RECORD 1 ]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
status_code | 302
status_line | HTTP/1.1 302 Found
headers     | {"P3P": "policyref=\"/w3c/p3p.xml\", CP=\"NON DSP ADM DEV PSD IVDo OUR IND STP PHY PRE NAV UNI\"", "Date": "Sat, 29 Oct 2016 00:08:43 GMT", "Server": "nginx", "Expires": "Sat, 29 Oct 2016 00:08:44 GMT", "Location": "https://ya.ru/", "Connection": "keep-alive", "Set-Cookie": "yandexuid=182183081477699724; Expires=Tue, 27-Oct-2026 00:08:43 GMT; Domain=.ya.ru; Path=/", "Cache-Control": "no-cache,no-store,max-age=0,must-revalidate", "Last-Modified": "Sat, 29 Oct 2016 00:08:44 GMT", "Content-Length": "0"}
body        |
is_json     | f

Another example, showing work with REST API:

test=> with results as (
  select jsonb_array_elements(get.body::jsonb->'results') as r
  from http_client.get('http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/', '{"user-agent":"test-robot"}'::jsonb)
)
select r->>'url' as url, r->>'name' as pokename
from results
order by pokename
limit 5;
                 url                  |  pokename
--------------------------------------+------------
 http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/15/ | beedrill
 http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/9/  | blastoise
 http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/1/  | bulbasaur
 http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/12/ | butterfree
 http://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/10/ | caterpie
(5 rows)

Installation

Clone the code (git clone ...) and then execute in psql:

begin;
\i /path/to/postgresql-http-client/install.sql
commit;

Uninstallation

\i /path/to/postgresql-http-client/uninstall.sql