Take me home

Ruby Net::HTTP cheat sheet

Written by August Lilleaas, published January 06, 2010

Update: It’s on GitHub now.


I always have to look up how to use Net::HTTP, and I never find what I’m looking for. Behold, a cheat sheet!

A basic request

require "net/https"
require "uri"

uri = URI.parse("http://google.com")
http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.request_uri)
request.initialize_http_header({"User-Agent" => "My Ruby Script"})

response = http.request(request)
puts response.code
# => 301
puts response["location"] # All headers are lowercase
# => http://www.google.com/

URI

uri = URI.parse("http://mysite.com/some_api")
uri = URI.parse("https://mysite.com/thing?foo=bar")

# URI will also guess the correct port
URI.parse("http://foo.com").port # => 80
URI.parse("https://foo.com/").port # => 443

# Full reference
uri = URI.parse("http://foo.com/this/is/everything?query=params")
# p (uri.methods - Object.methods).sort
p uri.scheme        # => "http"
p uri.host          # => "foo.com"
p uri.port          # => 80
p uri.request_uri   # => "/this/is/everything?query=params"
p uri.path          # => "/this/is/everything"
p uri.query         # => "query=params"

# There are setters as well
uri.port = 8080
uri.host = "google.com"
uri.scheme = "ftp"
p uri.to_s
# => "ftp://google.com:8080/this/is/everything?query=param"

Everything else

http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
http.open_timeout = 3 # in seconds
http.read_timeout = 3 # in seconds

# The request.
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.request_uri)

# All the HTTP 1.1 methods are available.
Net::HTTP::Get
Net::HTTP::Post
Net::HTTP::Put
Net::HTTP::Delete
Net::HTTP::Head
Net::HTTP::Options

request.body = "Request body here."
request.initialize_http_header({"Accept" => "*/*"})
request.basic_auth("username", "password")

response = http.request(request)
response.body
response.status
response["header-here"] # All headers are lowercase

SSL

# Normal ssl
http.use_ssl = true
http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE

# SSL .pem certs
pem = File.read("/path/to/my.pem")
http.use_ssl = true
http.cert = OpenSSL::X509::Certificate.new(pem)
http.key = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new(pem)
http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER

# Check for SSL dynamically. If your URI is https and you don't specify a
# port, the port will be 443, which is the correct SSL port.
http.use_ssl = (uri.port == 443)

Questions or comments?

Feel free to contact me on Twitter, @augustl, or e-mail me at august@augustl.com.