Roku Developer Program

[ib_beat]

So, I'm new in the whole Brightscript/Roku development environment and I'm having an issue with a request of a webservice. For ease, I made a function in the main.brs that I can call from other scripts that basically creates a roUrlTransfer object, gets the contents of the url in a variable and returns it. Here's the code:

Function vGetUrlContent(p_url As String)
    url = CreateObject("roUrlTransfer")
    url.SetUrl(p_url)
    html = url.GetToString()
    Return html
End Function

The same code (kinda) is already used successfully in the same main.brs file that has another purpose, but the same 3 lines are used.
However, when I call this function I get this error here:

BRIGHTSCRIPT: ERROR: roUrlTransfer: creating MAIN|TASK-only component failed on RENDER thread: pkg:/source/main.brs(306)

BrightScript Micro Debugger.
Enter any BrightScript statement, debug commands, or HELP.

Suspending threads...
Thread selected:  1*   pkg:/source/main.brs(307)               url.SetUrl(p_url)

Current Function:
305:  Function vGetUrlContent(p_url As String)
306:      url = CreateObject("roUrlTransfer")
307:*     url.SetUrl(p_url)
308:      html = url.GetToString()
309:      Return html
310:  End Function
'Dot' Operator attempted with invalid BrightScript Component or interface reference. (runtime error &hec) in pkg:/source/main.brs(307)
307:     url.SetUrl(p_url)
Backtrace:
#1  Function vgeturlcontent(p_url As String) As Dynamic
   file/line: pkg:/source/main.brs(307)
#0  Function onitemselected() As Void
   file/line: pkg:/components/screens/DetailsScreen/DetailsScreen.brs(84)
Local Variables:
p_url            roString (2.1 was String) refcnt=1 val:"(HERE IS THE ACTUAL WEBSERVICE URL)"
global           Interface:ifGlobal
m                roAssociativeArray refcnt=3 count:6
url              Invalid
html             <uninitialized>
Threads:
ID    Location                                Source Code
 0    pkg:/source/main.brs(80)                msg = wait(0, port)
 1*   pkg:/source/main.brs(307)               url.SetUrl(p_url)
  *selected

Brightscript Debugger> 

Any ideas?

[joetesta]

you can't do http requests from render thread. 
https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Task

[ib_beat]

How can I get around that if I have to call an http request from a render thread, if I can't call a main.brs function that does it for me?

[tim_beynart]

you create an instance of your task in the render thread logic, then run it.
for example,  you could write a task called "http_request" 
in the code for a screen (which is in the render thread), you do something like this:

  task = CreateObject("roSGNode", "http_request")
  task.observeField("response","someFunctionThatHandlesResponses")
  task.url = url
  task.control = "RUN"