Fetch Module

This XQuery Module provides functions to fetch the content of resources identified by URIs. Resources can be stored locally or remotely and e.g. use the file:// or http:// scheme. The HTML Module can be used to convert retrieved HTML documents to XML.

The module has been inspired by Zorba’s Fetch Module.

Conventions

All functions in this module are assigned to the http://basex.org/modules/fetch namespace, which is statically bound to the fetch prefix.
All errors are assigned to the http://basex.org/errors namespace, which is statically bound to the bxerr prefix.

Functions

fetch:text

Signatures	fetch:text($uri as xs:string) as xs:string fetch:text($uri as xs:string, $encoding as xs:string) as xs:string
Summary	Fetches the resource referred to by the given URI and returns it as string.
Errors	BXFE0001: the URI could not be resolved, or the resource could not be retrieved. BXFE0002: the specified encoding is not supported, or unknown.
Examples	fetch:text("http://en.wikipedia.org") returns a string representation of the English Wikipedia main HTML page.

fetch:binary

Signatures	fetch:binary($uri as xs:string) as xs:base64Binary
Summary	Fetches the resource referred to by the given URI and returns it as base64Binary.
Errors	BXFE0001: the URI could not be resolved, or the resource could not be retrieved.
Examples	fetch:binary("http://images.trulia.com/blogimg/c/5/f/4/679932_1298401950553_o.jpg") returns the addressed image.

fetch:content-type

Signatures	fetch:content-type($uri as xs:string) as xs:string
Summary	Returns the content-type (also called mime-type) of the resource specified by $uri: If local files are addressed, the file extension will be guessed based on the file extension. For remote resources, the request header will be evaluated.
Errors	BXFE0001: the URI could not be resolved, or the resource could not be retrieved.
Examples	fetch:content-type("http://docs.basex.org/skins/vector/images/wiki.png") returns image/png.

Errors

Code	Description
BXFE0001	The URI could not be resolved, or the resource could not be retrieved.
BXFE0002	The specified encoding is not supported, or unknown.

Changelog

The module was introduced with Version 7.5.1.