http.rb

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MIT licensed

Documentation

NOTE: This is the 5.x development branch. For the 4.x stable branch, please see:

https://github.com/httprb/http/tree/4-x-stable

About

HTTP (The Gem! a.k.a. http.rb) 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, via Ruby FFI bindings, http.rb uses the Node.js
http-parser, a fast HTTP parsing native extension. This library
isn’t just yet another wrapper around Net::HTTP. It implements the HTTP protocol
natively and outsources the parsing to native extensions.

Another Ruby HTTP library? Why should I care?

There are a lot of HTTP libraries to choose from in the Ruby ecosystem.
So why would you choose this one?

Top three reasons:

  1. Clean API: http.rb offers an easy-to-use API that should be a
    breath of fresh air after using something like Net::HTTP.

  2. Maturity: http.rb is one of the most mature Ruby HTTP clients, supporting
    features like persistent connections and fine-grained timeouts.

  3. Performance: using native parsers and a clean, lightweight implementation,
    http.rb achieves the best performance of any Ruby HTTP library which
    implements the HTTP protocol in Ruby instead of C:

| HTTP client | Time | Implementation |
|————————–|——–|———————–|
| curb (persistent) | 2.519 | libcurl wrapper |
| em-http-request | 2.731 | EM + http_parser.rb |
| Typhoeus | 2.851 | libcurl wrapper |
| StreamlyFFI (persistent) | 2.853 | libcurl wrapper |
| http.rb (persistent) | 2.970 | Ruby + http_parser.rb |
| http.rb | 3.588 | Ruby + http_parser.rb |
| HTTParty | 3.931 | Net::HTTP wrapper |
| Net::HTTP | 3.959 | Pure Ruby |
| Net::HTTP (persistent) | 4.043 | Pure Ruby |
| open-uri | 4.479 | Net::HTTP wrapper |
| Excon (persistent) | 4.618 | Pure Ruby |
| Excon | 4.701 | Pure Ruby |
| RestClient | 26.838 | Net::HTTP wrapper |

Benchmarks performed using excon’s benchmarking tool

DISCLAIMER: Most benchmarks you find in READMEs are crap,
including this one. These are out-of-date. If you care about
performance, benchmark for yourself for your own use cases!

Help and Discussion

If you need help or just want to talk about the http.rb,
visit the http.rb Google Group:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/httprb

You can join by email by sending a message to:

httprb+subscribe@googlegroups.com

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

https://github.com/httprb/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.rb wiki
for more detailed documentation and usage notes.

The following API documentation is also available:

Basic Usage

Here’s some simple examples to get you started:

>> HTTP.get("https://github.com").to_s
=> "\n\n\n\n\n  > HTTP.get("https://github.com")
=> #"GitHub.com", "Date"=>"Tue, 10 May...>

We can also obtain an HTTP::Response::Body object for this response:

>> HTTP.get("https://github.com").body
=> #

The response body can be streamed with HTTP::Response::Body#readpartial.
In practice, you’ll want to bind the HTTP::Response::Body to a local variable
and call #readpartial on it repeatedly until it returns nil:

>> body = HTTP.get("https://github.com").body
=> #
>> body.readpartial
=> "\n\n\n\n\n  > body.readpartial
=> "\" href=\"/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png\">\n    > body.readpartial
=> nil

Supported Ruby Versions

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

  • Ruby 2.4.x
  • Ruby 2.5.x
  • Ruby 2.6.x
  • Ruby 2.7.x
  • JRuby 9.2.x.x

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 http.rb

  • Fork http.rb on GitHub
  • Make your changes
  • Ensure all tests pass (bundle exec rake)
  • Send a pull request
  • If we like them we’ll merge them
  • If we’ve accepted a patch, feel free to ask for commit access!

Copyright

Copyright © 2011-2019 Tony Arcieri, Alexey V. Zapparov, Erik Michaels-Ober, Zachary Anker.
See LICENSE.txt for further details.