HTTP_VARIABLE( var-name [ , instance [ , attribute ] ] )

LONG VARCHAR

This function returns the value of the named HTTP variable. It is used when processing an HTTP request within a web service.

If var-name does not exist, the return value is NULL.

When the web service request is a POST, and the variable data is posted as multipart/form-data, the HTTP server receives HTTP headers for each individual variable. When the attribute parameter is specified, the HTTP_VARIABLE function returns the associated multipart/form-data header value from the POST request for the particular variable. For a variable representing a file, an attribute of Content-Disposition, Content-Type, and @BINARY would return the filename, media-type, and file contents respectively.

Normally, all input data goes through character set translation between the client (for example, a browser) character set, and the character set of the database. However, if @BINARY is specified for attribute, the variable value is returned without going through character set translation or %-decoding. This may be useful when receiving binary data, such as image data, from a client.

This function returns NULL when the specified instance does not exist or when the function is called from outside of an execution of a web service.

• NEXT_HTTP_VARIABLE function [Web service]
• sa_http_variable_info system procedure
• Accessing client-supplied HTTP variables and headers
• Web services functions
• Web services system procedures

When used within a stored procedure that is called by an HTTP web service, the following example retrieves the values of the HTTP variables indicated in the sample URL.

-- http://sample.com/demo/ShowDetail?product_id=300&customer_id=101
BEGIN
  DECLARE v_customer_id LONG VARCHAR;
  DECLARE v_product_id LONG VARCHAR;
  SET v_customer_id = HTTP_VARIABLE( 'customer_id' );
  SET v_product_id = HTTP_VARIABLE( 'product_id' );
  CALL ShowSalesOrderDetail( v_customer_id, v_product_id );
END;

When used within a stored procedure that is called by an HTTP web service, the following statements request the Content-Disposition and Content-Type headers of the image variable:

SET v_name = HTTP_VARIABLE( 'image', NULL, 'Content-Disposition' );
SET v_type = HTTP_VARIABLE( 'image', NULL, 'Content-Type' );

When used within a stored procedure that is called by an HTTP web service, the following statement requests the value of the image variable in its current character set, that is, without going through character set translation:

SET v_image = HTTP_VARIABLE( 'image', NULL, '@BINARY' );