How to send an HTTP Request from an Unreal Blueprint?

Question

I'm updating a little telemetry-logging blueprint that uses HTTP requests to log game events to a server.

In the past, I've used the Fetch plugin for this, though it's currently listed as "Not for Sale" and at least for now it's unclear why.

There's also HTTP Requests for Blueprints currently listed for $4.99, which isn't bad. (Though as I'm setting this up for students to use, I like to avoid imposing extra costs on them whenever I can, even if they're small)

In my search, I also found HTTP request and related nodes in the core Unreal 5.3 documentation - so I wondered if this functionality is built-in now and no longer requires a separate plugin?

The trouble is, when I create a blueprint class and try to search for http-related nodes to add in its event graph, it comes up empty:

Am I using the wrong type of blueprint, do I need to somehow enable/import the HTTP nodes as a library, or am I doing something else wrong here?

Or have I simply misunderstood the (regrettably sparse, as usual) Unreal documentation, and this is still a feature that requires extra C++ code or plugins to achieve?

Answer 1

After doing a quick search I found this video which says that you need to enable the experimental Epic "HTTP Blueprint" plugin, which isn't enabled by default.

To enable the plugin, the steps are:

1. Go to Edit > Plugins

2. Search for HTTP

3. Check the box next to "HTTP Blueprint (Experimental)"

The HTTP Request node will now be available when searching in a Blueprint:

Answer 2

Here's how I ended up solving it with the Fetch plugin I'd used previously. Its GitHub page says:

For non-commercial projects, you can also get it from GitHub.

Since I only needed this for educational use in my classes, that non-commercial license was enough for my purposes.

I downloaded the files off GitHub, then ran package.bat since its last commit message said "Add new packaging tools for 5.2".

This created a To Package folder with sub-folders for Unreal versions 4.6, 4.7, 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2.

Since I'm using Unreal 5.3, the 5.2 version was closest. I copied the contents of the Fetch_52 folder to a subfolder of my Unreal project labelled Plugins\Fetch.

When I booted up Unreal and loaded my project, it gave a warning that this plugin was built for version 5.2, but after confirming I wanted to load it anyway, it worked without issues.

You can edit the "EngineVersion" line in the Fetch.uplugin file to read "5.3" to suppress this warning on load.

When I have some time, I'll try porting my blueprints to work with the built-in experimental nodes Adam showed how to enable. That will let me avoid this batch file fiddling for future projects, once I can verify that the experimental version handles what I need. Till then, going with the familiar version got me up and running faster.

Answer 3

Hey man check out if this is working for you :)