HTTPI

HTTPI provides a common interface for Ruby HTTP libraries.

Installation

HTTPI is available through Rubygems and can be installed via:

$ gem install httpi

Getting started

In order to provide a common interface, HTTPI provides the HTTPI::Request object for you to configure your request. Here's a very simple GET request.

request = HTTPI::Request.new("http://example.com")
HTTPI.get request

To execute a POST request, you may want to specify a payload.

request = HTTPI::Request.new
request.url = "http://post.example.com"
request.body = "some data"

HTTPI.post request

HTTPI

The HTTPI module uses one of the available adapters to execute HTTP requests.

GET

HTTPI.get(request, adapter = nil)
HTTPI.get(url, adapter = nil)

POST

HTTPI.post(request, adapter = nil)
HTTPI.post(url, body, adapter = nil)

HEAD

HTTPI.head(request, adapter = nil)
HTTPI.head(url, adapter = nil)

PUT

HTTPI.put(request, adapter = nil)
HTTPI.put(url, body, adapter = nil)

DELETE

HTTPI.delete(request, adapter = nil)
HTTPI.delete(url, adapter = nil)

Notice

You can specify the adapter to use per request
And request methods always return an HTTPI::Response

More control

If you need more control over the request, you can access the HTTP client instance represented by your adapter in a block:

HTTPI.post request do |http|
  http.use_ssl = true  # Curb example
end

HTTPI::Adapter

HTTPI uses adapters to support multiple HTTP libraries. It currently contains adapters for:

httpclient ~> 2.1.5
curb ~> 0.7.8
net/http

You can manually specify the adapter to use via:

HTTPI.adapter = :curb  # or one of [:httpclient, :net_http]

If you don't specify which adapter to use, HTTPI try to load HTTPClient, then Curb and finally NetHTTP.

Notice

HTTPI does not force you to install any of these libraries. If you'd like to use on of the more advanced libraries (HTTPClient or Curb), you have to make sure they're in your LOAD_PATH. HTTPI will then load the library when executing HTTP requests.

HTTPI::Request

URL

request.url = "http://example.com"
request.url # => #<URI::HTTP:0x101c1ab18 URL:http://example.com>

Proxy

request.proxy = "http://example.com"
request.proxy # => #<URI::HTTP:0x101c1ab18 URL:http://example.com>

Headers

request.headers["Accept-Charset"] = "utf-8"
request.headers = { "Accept-Charset" => "utf-8" }
request.headers # => { "Accept-Charset" => "utf-8" }

Body

request.body = "some data"
request.body # => "some data"

Open timeout

request.open_timeout = 30 # sec

Read timeout

request.read_timeout = 30 # sec

HTTPI::Auth

HTTPI::Auth supports HTTP basic and digest authentication.

request.auth.basic("username", "password")   # HTTP basic auth credentials
request.auth.digest("username", "password")  # HTTP digest auth credentials
request.auth.ntlm("username", "password")    # NTLM auth credentials

HTTPI::Auth::SSL

HTTPI::Auth::SSL manages SSL client authentication.

request.auth.ssl.cert_key_file     = "client_key.pem"   # the private key file to use
request.auth.ssl.cert_key_password = "C3rtP@ssw0rd"     # the key file's password
request.auth.ssl.cert_file         = "client_cert.pem"  # the certificate file to use
request.auth.ssl.ca_cert_file      = "ca_cert.pem"      # the ca certificate file to use
request.auth.ssl.verify_mode       = :none              # or one of [:peer, :fail_if_no_peer_cert, :client_once]

HTTPI::Response

Every request returns an HTTPI::Response. It contains the response code, headers and body.

response = HTTPI.get request

response.code     # => 200
response.headers  # => { "Content-Encoding" => "gzip" }
response.body     # => "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC ...>"

The response.body handles gzipped and DIME encoded responses.

TODO

Return the original HTTPI::Request for debugging purposes
Return the time it took to execute the request

Logging

HTTPI by default logs each HTTP request to STDOUT using a log level of :debug.

HTTPI.log       = false     # disable logging
HTTPI.logger    = MyLogger  # change the logger
HTTPI.log_level = :info     # change the log level