http - gem.sh

SEO Note

This Gem has the worst name in the history of SEO. But perhaps we can fix that if we
all refer to it as “The HTTP Gem”, or even better, the “Ruby HTTP Gem”.

About

The HTTP Gem is an easy-to-use client library for making requests from Ruby. It uses
a simple method chaining system for building requests, similar to Python’s Requests

Under the hood, The HTTP Gem uses http_parser.rb, a fast HTTP parsing native
extension based on the Node.js parser and a Java port thereof.

Help and Discussion

If you need help or just want to talk about the Ruby HTTP Gem, visit our Google
Group, or join by email by sending a message to:
ruby-http-gem+subscribe@googlegroups.com.

If you believe you’ve found a bug, please report it at:

https://github.com/tarcieri/http/issues

Installation

Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:

gem ‘http’

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install http

Inside of your Ruby program do:

require ‘http’

…to pull it in as a dependency.

Documentation

Please see the HTTP Gem Wiki
for more detailed documentation and usage notes.

Basic Usage

Here’s some simple examples to get you started:

GET requests

&gt;&gt; HTTP.get("http://www.google.com").to_s
=&gt; "&gt; HTTP.get("http://www.google.com")
=&gt; #"text/html; charset=UTF-8", "Date"=&gt;"Fri, ...&gt;
 =&gt; #"text/html; ...&gt;

We can also obtain an HTTP::ResponseBody object for this response:

&gt;&gt; HTTP.get("http://www.google.com").body
 =&gt; #

The response body can be streamed with HTTP::ResponseBody#readpartial:

&gt;&gt; HTTP.get("http://www.google.com").body.readpartial
 =&gt; " {:foo =&gt; "42"}

Making GET requests with query string parameters is as simple.

HTTP.get "http://example.com/resource", :params =&gt; {:foo =&gt; "bar"}

Want to POST with a specific body, JSON for instance?

HTTP.post "http://example.com/resource", :json =&gt; { :foo =&gt; '42' })

It’s easy!

Proxy Support

Making request behind proxy is as simple as making them directly. Just specify
hostname (or IP address) of your proxy server and it’s port, and here you go:

HTTP.via("proxy-hostname.local", 8080)
  .get "http://example.com/resource"

Proxy needs authentication? No problem:

HTTP.via("proxy-hostname.local", 8080, "username", "password")
  .get "http://example.com/resource"

Adding Headers

The HTTP gem uses the concept of chaining to simplify requests. Let’s say
you want to get the latest commit of this library from Github in JSON format.
One way we could do this is by tacking a filename on the end of the URL:

HTTP.get "https://github.com/tarcieri/http/commit/HEAD.json"

The Github API happens to support this approach, but really this is a bit of a
hack that makes it easy for people typing URLs into the address bars of
browsers to perform the act of content negotiation. Since we have access to
the full, raw power of HTTP, we can perform content negotiation the way HTTP
intends us to, by using the Accept header:

HTTP.with_headers(:accept =&gt; 'application/json').
  get("https://github.com/tarcieri/http/commit/HEAD")

This requests JSON from Github. Github is smart enough to understand our
request and returns a response with Content-Type: application/json. If you
happen to have a library loaded which defines the JSON constant and implements
JSON.parse, the HTTP gem will attempt to parse the JSON response.

Shorter aliases exists for HTTP.with_headers:

HTTP.with(:accept =&gt; 'application/json').
  get("https://github.com/tarcieri/http/commit/HEAD")

HTTP[:accept =&gt; 'application/json'].
  get("https://github.com/tarcieri/http/commit/HEAD")

Content Negotiation

As important a concept as content negotiation is to HTTP, it sure should be easy,
right? But usually it’s not, and so we end up adding “.json” onto the ends of
our URLs because the existing mechanisms make it too hard. It should be easy:

HTTP.accept(:json).get("https://github.com/tarcieri/http/commit/HEAD")

This adds the appropriate Accept header for retrieving a JSON response for the
given resource.

Celluloid::IO Support

The HTTP Gem makes it simple to make multiple concurrent HTTP requests from a
Celluloid::IO actor. Here’s a parallel HTTP fetcher with the HTTP Gem and
Celluloid::IO:

require 'celluloid/io'
require 'http'

class HttpFetcher
  include Celluloid::IO

  def fetch(url)
    HTTP.get(url, socket_class: Celluloid::IO::TCPSocket).response
  end
end

There’s a little more to it, but that’s the core idea!

Full parallel HTTP fetcher example
See also: Celluloid::IO

Supported Ruby Versions

This library aims to support and is tested against the following Ruby
versions:

Ruby 1.8.7
Ruby 1.9.2
Ruby 1.9.3
Ruby 2.0.0
Ruby 2.1.0

If something doesn’t work on one of these versions, it’s a bug.

This library may inadvertently work (or seem to work) on other Ruby versions,
however support will only be provided for the versions listed above.

If you would like this library to support another Ruby version or
implementation, you may volunteer to be a maintainer. Being a maintainer
entails making sure all tests run and pass on that implementation. When
something breaks on your implementation, you will be responsible for providing
patches in a timely fashion. If critical issues for a particular implementation
exist at the time of a major release, support for that Ruby version may be
dropped.

Contributing to The HTTP Gem

Fork the HTTP gem on github
Make your changes and send me a pull request
If we like them we’ll merge them
If we’ve accepted a patch, feel free to ask for commit access!

Modules

Classes