How can I make a curl type http request after a node submission?

Question

Basically I have a node type which I've named "rss". Its purpose is exactly as I'm sure you guessed, all of these nodes are available as an rss view at a specific url (ex: http://mysite/rss/feed).

When a node of that type gets created (or updated I suppose) I need to make an http request to a specific url (the details to that are irrelevant to this question).

So lets say I create a new "rss" post on my drupal site, after it gets submitted I need an http request to the url ex: http://myapplication/blog?status=fetch

I know that I can make such a request happen with the visit url function in actions core module, and "trigger" it on node creation (not of a specific type though) but I think it does exactly that, and actually VISITS the url, whereas I just need it to make a curl type request.

I'm also using the scheduler module, so posts of this type can be scheduled, so I would need to trigger the action in sync with the schedule, if it is scheduled to be posted at a certain time/date, that is.

I'm guessing I need to use some sort of hook functionality and make my own module, true? Or is there any other way of doing this?

Answer 1

There's no pre-configured action for making a back-end request like that, so you will need to write some code. It's not going to be terribly hard to accomplish, though. Drupal has a function called drupal_http_request() to hit the external URL. You'll execute that function within a hook_nodeapi() implementation, which runs at various times in the node creation process.

Drupal 6:

<?php
/**
 * Implements hook_nodeapi().
 */
function MODULENAME_nodeapi(&$node, $op) {
  // In D6, this hook is executed at various points in the node creation/render process.
  // We only want to run code during the node's "insert" operation.
  if ($op == 'insert') {
    // Only run for RSS nodes.
    if ($node->type == 'rss') {
      // Make a back-end HTTP request to an external resource.
      $url = 'http://my-url.com';
      $response = drupal_http_request($url);
    }
  }
}
?>