Revised January 2022

In the ATE environment, the HTTP subroutine can be invoked from either the server or the client. The main reason for invoking it from the client is that the server may not have access to the HTTP subroutine; it requires a separate library, libashnet.so, which is not available under AIX. Another possible reason might have to do with complex heterogeneous network topologies, where only the client can 'see' the target web server.

To invoke HTTP from the client, use the wrapper routine ATHTTP.SBX. It uses essentially the same calling format, limited however to the file mode operations, but handles the communication and data transfers between the server and the ATE client. Note that filenames in the request and response parameters here will be converted, if necessary, to server-relative native format. Only one filename may be specified in the request parameter, and if using the content-type prefix, ATHTTP.SBX 1.0(102) or higher is required. . See the source code ATHTTP.BP in SOSLIB:[907,33] for further details, and the sample program HTTP1.BP in EXLIB:[908,25] for an example of calling it.