ANSA Composer is capable of acting as either HTTP client (outbound) or HTTP server (inbound). That is:

• As HTTP client, it can send HTTP requests and payloads to an HTTP server and receive the response
• As HTTP server, it is capable of receiving HTTP requests and payloads and responding.

For more information about outbound and inbound HTTP processing refer to the following sections:

HTTP Outbound (Client) Processing in LANSA Composer

HTTP Inbound (Server) Processing in LANSA Composer

In both cases, an HTTP Configuration is used to contain details specific to a particular inbound request or to contain the addressing, credentials and protocol details necessary to send an outbound request. For more information refer to:

HTTP Configuration Details

Having created the HTTP Configuration, you can use one or more of the HTTP Transport Activities in your Processing Sequence to prepare and send an outbound HTTP request or to receive and respond to an inbound HTTP request.

LANSA Composer provides two sets of HTTP activities:

• For simple cases, LANSA Composer provides a set of activities that, in a single operation, can send an outbound HTTP request and receive the response or receive an inbound request and send a response.
  
  These activities are the easiest and quickest to use if all you need to do is to send (or receive) a request with an optional file as payload and receive (or send) the response.
  
  The "simple" HTTP activities are:

  HTTP_SIMPLE_GET	Retrieves a document from an HTTP server.
  HTTP_SIMPLE_POST	Sends data to an HTTP server and/or receives response data from the server.
  HTTP_SIMPLE_INBOUND	Handles an inbound HTTP message and saves it to a specific directory.

• For more advanced applications, LANSA Composer provides a suite of activities that offer much greater flexibility and capability to handle a wide-range of different styles of HTTP requests.
  
  With this suite of activities, it will be necessary to use more than one of the activities in conjunction in order to prepare and send an outbound HTTP request or to receive and respond to an inbound HTTP request.
  
  The advanced HTTP activities are:

  HTTP_BEGIN_INBOUND	Begin HTTP inbound request handling
  HTTP_BEGIN_OUTBOUND	Begin HTTP outbound request handling
  HTTP_END	End HTTP request processing
  HTTP_MULTIPART_GET	Get inbound multipart component item
  HTTP_MULTIPART_SET	Set outbound multipart component item
  HTTP_PROPERTY_GET	Get HTTP protocol property value(s)
  HTTP_PROPERTY_SET	Set HTTP protocol property value(s)
  HTTP_RECEIVE_FILE	Receive a single file HTTP payload
  HTTP_RECEIVE_MULTI	Receive HTTP payload as multipart content
  HTTP_RECEIVE_NAMEVAL	Receive HTTP payload as name-value pairs
  HTTP_RESET	Reset for further HTTP outbound requests
  HTTP_RESPOND_FILE	Send file as response to HTTP request
  HTTP_RESPOND_MULTI	Send multipart content as response to HTTP request
  HTTP_RESPOND_NAMEVAL	Send name-value pairs as response to HTTP request
  HTTP_RESPOND_STATUS	Send status as response to HTTP request
  HTTP_SEND	Send request to HTTP server
  HTTP_SEND_FILE	Send file to HTTP server
  HTTP_SEND_MULTI	Send multipart content to HTTP server
  HTTP_SEND_NAMEVAL	Send name-value pairs to HTTP server