{Gem Downloads] {Build Status] {Code Climate] {Inline docs]
A simple HTTP and REST client for Ruby, inspired by the Sinatra's microframework style of specifying actions: get, put, post, delete.
Main page: github.com/rest-client/rest-client Mailing list: groups.io/g/rest-client
We have a new email list for announcements, hosted by Groups.io.
Subscribe on the web: groups.io/g/rest-client
Subscribe by sending an email: rest-client+subscribe@groups.io
Open discussion subgroup: groups.io/g/rest-client+discuss
The old Librelist mailing list is defunct, as Librelist appears to be broken and not accepting new mail. The old archives are still up, but have been imported into the new list archives as well. librelist.com/browser/rest.client
MRI Ruby 2.0 and newer are supported. Alternative interpreters compatible with 2.0+ should work as well.
Earlier Ruby versions such as 1.8.7, 1.9.2, and 1.9.3 are no longer supported. These versions no longer have any official support, and do not receive security updates.
The rest-client gem depends on these other gems for usage at runtime:
There are also several development dependencies. It's recommended to use bundler to manage these dependencies for hacking on rest-client.
Users are encouraged to upgrade to rest-client 2.0, which cleans up a number of API warts and wrinkles, making rest-client generally more useful. Usage is largely compatible, so many applications will be able to upgrade with no changes.
Overview of significant changes:
requires Ruby >= 2.0
RestClient::Response
objects are a
subclass of String
rather than a
Frankenstein monster. And
#body
or #to_s
return a true String
object.
cleanup of exception classes, including new
RestClient::Exceptions::Timeout
improvements to handling of
redirects: responses and history are properly
exposed
major changes to
cookie support: cookie jars are used for browser-like
behavior throughout
encoding: Content-Type charset response headers are used to automatically
set
the encoding of the response string
HTTP params: handling of GET/POST
params is more consistent and sophisticated
for deeply nested hash
objects, and ParamsArray
can be used to pass ordered
params
improved proxy support with per-request proxy configuration, plus the
ability
to disable proxies set by environment variables
default request
headers: rest-client sets Accept: *
and
User-Agent:
rest-client/...
See history.md for a more complete description of changes.
Basic usage:
require 'rest-client' RestClient.get(url, headers={}) RestClient.post(url, payload, headers={})
In the high level helpers, only POST, PATCH, and PUT take a payload
argument.
To pass a payload with other HTTP verbs or to pass more advanced
options, use
RestClient::Request.execute
instead.
More detailed examples:
require 'rest-client' RestClient.get 'http://example.com/resource' RestClient.get 'http://example.com/resource', {params: {id: 50, 'foo' => 'bar'}} RestClient.get 'https://user:password@example.com/private/resource', {accept: :json} RestClient.post 'http://example.com/resource', {param1: 'one', nested: {param2: 'two'}} RestClient.post "http://example.com/resource", {'x' => 1}.to_json, {content_type: :json, accept: :json} RestClient.delete 'http://example.com/resource' >> response = RestClient.get 'http://example.com/resource' => <RestClient::Response 200 "<!doctype h..."> >> response.code => 200 >> response.cookies => {"Foo"=>"BAR", "QUUX"=>"QUUUUX"} >> response.headers => {:content_type=>"text/html; charset=utf-8", :cache_control=>"private" ... } >> response.body => "<!doctype html>\n<html>\n<head>\n <title>Example Domain</title>\n\n ..." RestClient.post( url, { :transfer => { :path => '/foo/bar', :owner => 'that_guy', :group => 'those_guys' }, :upload => { :file => File.new(path, 'rb') } })
The top level helper methods like RestClient.get accept a headers
hash as
their last argument and don't allow passing more complex
options. But these
helpers are just thin wrappers around
RestClient::Request.execute
.
RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://example.com/resource', timeout: 10) RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://example.com/resource', ssl_ca_file: 'myca.pem', ssl_ciphers: 'AESGCM:!aNULL')
You can also use this to pass a payload for HTTP verbs like DELETE, where
the
RestClient.delete
helper doesn't accept a payload.
RestClient::Request.execute(method: :delete, url: 'http://example.com/resource', payload: 'foo', headers: {myheader: 'bar'})
Due to unfortunate choices in the original API, the params used to populate
the
query string are actually taken out of the headers hash. So if you want
to pass
both the params hash and more complex options, use the special
key
:params
in the headers hash. This design may change in a
future major
release.
RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://example.com/resource', timeout: 10, headers: {params: {foo: 'bar'}}) ➔ GET http://example.com/resource?foo=bar
Yeah, that's right! This does multipart sends for you!
RestClient.post '/data', :myfile => File.new("/path/to/image.jpg", 'rb')
This does two things for you:
Auto-detects that you have a File value sends it as multipart
Auto-detects the mime of the file and sets it in the HEAD of the payload for each entry
If you are sending params that do not contain a File object but the payload needs to be multipart then:
RestClient.post '/data', {:foo => 'bar', :multipart => true}
resource = RestClient::Resource.new 'http://example.com/resource' resource.get private_resource = RestClient::Resource.new 'https://example.com/private/resource', 'user', 'pass' private_resource.put File.read('pic.jpg'), :content_type => 'image/jpg'
See RestClient::Resource module docs for details.
site = RestClient::Resource.new('http://example.com') site['posts/1/comments'].post 'Good article.', :content_type => 'text/plain'
See RestClient::Resource
docs for details.
for result codes between 200
and 207
, a
RestClient::Response
will be returned
for result codes 301
, 302
or 307
,
the redirection will be followed if the request is a GET
or a
HEAD
for result code 303
, the redirection will be followed and the
request transformed into a GET
for other cases, a RestClient::ExceptionWithResponse
holding
the Response will be raised; a specific exception class will be thrown for
known error codes
call .response
on the exception to get the server's
response
>> RestClient.get 'http://example.com/nonexistent' Exception: RestClient::NotFound: 404 Not Found >> begin RestClient.get 'http://example.com/nonexistent' rescue RestClient::ExceptionWithResponse => e e.response end => <RestClient::Response 404 "<!doctype h...">
While most exceptions have been collected under
RestClient::RequestFailed
aka
RestClient::ExceptionWithResponse
, there are a few quirky
exceptions that
have been kept for backwards compatibility.
RestClient will propagate up exceptions like socket errors without modification:
>> RestClient.get 'http://localhost:12345' Exception: Errno::ECONNREFUSED: Connection refused - connect(2) for "localhost" port 12345
RestClient handles a few specific error cases separately in order to give better error messages. These will hopefully be cleaned up in a future major release.
RestClient::ServerBrokeConnection
is translated from
EOFError
to give a
better error message.
RestClient::SSLCertificateNotVerified
is raised when HTTPS
validation fails.
Other OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError
errors are
raised as is.
By default, rest-client will follow HTTP 30x redirection requests.
New in 2.0: RestClient::Response
exposes a
#history
method that returns
a list of each response received
in a redirection chain.
>> r = RestClient.get('http://httpbin.org/redirect/2') => <RestClient::Response 200 "{\n \"args\":..."> # see each response in the redirect chain >> r.history => [<RestClient::Response 302 "<!DOCTYPE H...">, <RestClient::Response 302 "">] # see each requested URL >> r.request.url => "http://httpbin.org/get" >> r.history.map {|x| x.request.url} => ["http://httpbin.org/redirect/2", "http://httpbin.org/relative-redirect/1"]
To disable automatic redirection, set :max_redirects => 0
.
New in 2.0: Prior versions of rest-client would
raise
RestClient::MaxRedirectsReached
, with no easy way to
access the server's
response. In 2.0, rest-client raises the
normal
RestClient::ExceptionWithResponse
as it would with any
other non-HTTP-20x
response.
>> RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://httpbin.org/redirect/1') => RestClient::Response 200 "{\n "args":..." >> RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://httpbin.org/redirect/1', max_redirects: 0) RestClient::Found: 302 Found
To manually follow redirection, you can call
Response#follow_redirection
. Or
you could of course inspect
the result and choose custom behavior.
>> RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://httpbin.org/redirect/1', max_redirects: 0) RestClient::Found: 302 Found >> begin RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://httpbin.org/redirect/1', max_redirects: 0) rescue RestClient::ExceptionWithResponse => err end >> err => #<RestClient::Found: 302 Found> >> err.response => RestClient::Response 302 "<!DOCTYPE H..." >> err.response.headers[:location] => "/get" >> err.response.follow_redirection => RestClient::Response 200 "{\n "args":..."
The result of a RestClient::Request
is a
RestClient::Response
object.
New in 2.0: RestClient::Response
objects are
now a subclass of String
.
Previously, they were a real String
object with response functionality mixed
in, which was very confusing to
work with.
Response objects have several useful methods. (See the class rdoc for more details.)
Response#code
: The HTTP response code
Response#body
: The response body as a string. (AKA .to_s)
Response#headers
: A hash of HTTP response headers
Response#raw_headers
: A hash of HTTP response headers as
unprocessed arrays
Response#cookies
: A hash of HTTP cookies set by the server
Response#cookie_jar
: New in 1.8 An HTTP::CookieJar of
cookies
Response#request
: The RestClient::Request object used to make
the request
Response#history
: New in 2.0 If redirection was
followed, a list of prior Response objects
RestClient.get('http://example.com') ➔ <RestClient::Response 200 "<!doctype h..."> begin RestClient.get('http://example.com/notfound') rescue RestClient::ExceptionWithResponse => err err.response end ➔ <RestClient::Response 404 "<!doctype h...">
A block can be passed to the RestClient method. This block will then be called with the Response. Response.return! can be called to invoke the default response's behavior.
# Don't raise exceptions but return the response >> RestClient.get('http://example.com/nonexistent') {|response, request, result| response } => <RestClient::Response 404 "<!doctype h...">
# Manage a specific error code RestClient.get('http://example.com/resource') { |response, request, result, &block| case response.code when 200 p "It worked !" response when 423 raise SomeCustomExceptionIfYouWant else response.return!(request, result, &block) end }
But note that it may be more straightforward to use exceptions to handle different HTTP error response cases:
begin resp = RestClient.get('http://example.com/resource') rescue RestClient::Unauthorized, RestClient::Forbidden => err puts 'Access denied' return err.response rescue RestClient::ImATeapot => err puts 'The server is a teapot! # RFC 2324' return err.response else puts 'It worked!' return resp end
For GET and HEAD requests, rest-client automatically follows redirection.
For
other HTTP verbs, call .follow_redirection
on the response
object (works both
in block form and in exception form).
# Follow redirections for all request types and not only for get and head # RFC : "If the 301, 302 or 307 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, # the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, # since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued." # block style RestClient.post('http://example.com/redirect', 'body') { |response, request, result| case response.code when 301, 302, 307 response.follow_redirection else response.return! end } # exception style by explicit classes begin RestClient.post('http://example.com/redirect', 'body') rescue RestClient::MovedPermanently, RestClient::Found, RestClient::TemporaryRedirect => err err.response.follow_redirection end # exception style by response code begin RestClient.post('http://example.com/redirect', 'body') rescue RestClient::ExceptionWithResponse => err case err.http_code when 301, 302, 307 err.response.follow_redirection else raise end end
If you need to normalize URIs, e.g. to work with International Resource Identifiers (IRIs), use the addressable gem (addressable.rubyforge.org/api/) in your code:
require 'addressable/uri' RestClient.get(Addressable::URI.parse("http://www.詹姆斯.com/").normalize.to_str)
For cases not covered by the general API, you can use the
RestClient::Request
class, which provides a lower-level API.
You can:
specify ssl parameters
override cookies
manually handle the response (e.g. to operate on it as a stream rather than reading it all into memory)
See RestClient::Request
's documentation for more
information.
The restclient shell command gives an IRB session with RestClient already loaded:
$ restclient >> RestClient.get 'http://example.com'
Specify a URL argument for get/post/put/delete on that resource:
$ restclient http://xample.com >> put '/resource', 'data'
Add a user and password for authenticated resources:
$ restclient https://xample.com user pass >> delete '/private/resource'
Create ~/.restclient for named sessions:
sinatra: url: http://localhost:4567 rack: url: http://localhost:9292 private_site: url: http://example.com username: user password: pass
Then invoke:
$ restclient private_site
Use as a one-off, curl-style:
$ restclient get http://xample.com/resource > output_body $ restclient put http://xample.com/resource < input_body
To enable logging you can:
set RestClient.log with a Ruby Logger, or
set an environment variable to avoid modifying the code (in this case you can use a file name, “stdout” or “stderr”):
$ RESTCLIENT_LOG=stdout path/to/my/program
Either produces logs like this:
RestClient.get "http://some/resource" # => 200 OK | text/html 250 bytes RestClient.put "http://some/resource", "payload" # => 401 Unauthorized | application/xml 340 bytes
Note that these logs are valid Ruby, so you can paste them into the
restclient
shell or a script to replay your sequence of rest
calls.
All calls to RestClient, including Resources,
will use the proxy specified by
RestClient.proxy
:
RestClient.proxy = "http://proxy.example.com/" RestClient.get "http://some/resource" # => response from some/resource as proxied through proxy.example.com
Often the proxy URL is set in an environment variable, so you can do this to use whatever proxy the system is configured to use:
RestClient.proxy = ENV['http_proxy']
New in 2.0: Specify a per-request proxy by passing the
:proxy option to
RestClient::Request.
This will override any proxies set by environment variable
or by the global
RestClient.proxy
value.
RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://example.com', proxy: 'http://proxy.example.com') # => single request proxied through the proxy
This can be used to disable the use of a proxy for a particular request.
RestClient.proxy = "http://proxy.example.com/" RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://example.com', proxy: nil) # => single request sent without a proxy
Rest-client can render a hash as HTTP query parameters for
GET/HEAD/DELETE
requests or as HTTP post data in
x-www-form-urlencoded
format for POST
requests.
New in 2.0: Even though there is no standard specifying how this should work, rest-client follows a similar convention to the one used by Rack / Rails servers for handling arrays, nested hashes, and null values.
The implementation in
./lib/rest-client/utils.rb
closely
follows
Rack::Utils.build_nested_query,
but
treats empty arrays and hashes as nil
. (Rack drops them
entirely, which
is confusing behavior.)
If you don't like this behavior and want more control, just serialize
params
yourself (e.g. with URI.encode_www_form
) and add the
query string to the URL
directly for GET parameters or pass the payload as
a string for POST requests.
Basic GET params: <code>ruby RestClient.get('httpbin.org/get', params: {foo: 'bar', baz: 'qux'}) # GET "httpbin.org/get?foo=bar&baz=qux" </code>
Basic x-www-form-urlencoded
POST
params:
<code>ruby
>> r = RestClient.post('httpbin.org/post', {foo:
'bar', baz: 'qux'})
# POST "httpbin.org/post", data:
"foo=bar&baz=qux"
=> <RestClient::Response 200
"{\n \"args\":...">
>> JSON.parse(r.body)
=>
{"args"=>{},
"data"=>"",
"files"=>{},
"form"=>{"baz"=>"qux",
"foo"=>"bar"},
"headers"=>
{"Accept"=>" *",
"Accept-Encoding"=>"gzip, deflate",
"Content-Length"=>"15",
"Content-Type"=>"application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
"Host"=>"httpbin.org"},
"json"=>nil,
"url"=>"httpbin.org/post"}
</code>
JSON payload: rest-client does not speak JSON natively, so serialize your payload to a string before passing it to rest-client. <code>ruby >> payload = {'name' => 'newrepo', 'description': 'A new repo'} >> RestClient.post('api.github.com/user/repos', payload.to_json, content_type: :json) => <RestClient::Response 201 "{\"id\":75149..."> </code>
Advanced GET params (arrays): ```ruby
r = RestClient.get('http-params.herokuapp.com/get', params: {foo: [1,2,3]})
GET “href=”https://http-params.herokuapp.com/get?foo[]=1&foo[]=2&foo[]=3“>http-params.herokuapp.com/get?foo[]=1&foo[]=2&foo”¶ ↑
=> <RestClient::Response 200 “Method: GET…”> puts r.body query_string: "foo[]=1&foo=2&foo[]=3" decoded: "foo[]=1&foo=2&foo[]=3"
GET: {"foo"=>["1", "2", "3"]} ```
Advanced GET params (nested hashes): ```ruby
r = RestClient.get('http-params.herokuapp.com/get', params: {outer: {foo: 123, bar: 456}})
GET “href=”https://http-params.herokuapp.com/get?outer[foo]=123&outer[bar]=456“>http-params.herokuapp.com/get?outer[foo]=123&outer”¶ ↑
=> <RestClient::Response 200 “Method: GET…”> puts r.body ... query_string: "outer=123&outer=456" decoded: "outer=123&outer=456"
GET: {"outer"=>{"foo"=>"123", "bar"=>"456"}} ```
New in 2.0: The new RestClient::ParamsArray
class allows callers to
provide ordering even to structured parameters.
This is useful for unusual
cases where the server treats the order of
parameters as significant or you
want to pass a particular key multiple
times.
Multiple fields with the same name using ParamsArray: <code>ruby >> RestClient.get('httpbin.org/get', params: RestClient::ParamsArray.new([[:foo, 1], [:foo, 2]])) # GET "httpbin.org/get?foo=1&foo=2" </code>
Nested ParamsArray: <code>ruby >> RestClient.get('httpbin.org/get', params: {foo: RestClient::ParamsArray.new([[:a, 1], [:a, 2]])}) # GET "href="https://httpbin.org/get?foo[a]=1&foo[a]=2">httpbin.org/get?foo[a]=1&foo" </code>
Request headers can be set by passing a ruby hash containing keys and values representing header names and values:
# GET request with modified headers RestClient.get 'http://example.com/resource', {:Authorization => 'Bearer cT0febFoD5lxAlNAXHo6g'} # POST request with modified headers RestClient.post 'http://example.com/resource', {:foo => 'bar', :baz => 'qux'}, {:Authorization => 'Bearer cT0febFoD5lxAlNAXHo6g'} # DELETE request with modified headers RestClient.delete 'http://example.com/resource', {:Authorization => 'Bearer cT0febFoD5lxAlNAXHo6g'}
By default the timeout for a request is 60 seconds. Timeouts for your
request can
be adjusted by setting the timeout:
to the number
of seconds that you would like
the request to wait. Setting
timeout:
will override both read_timeout:
and
open_timeout:
.
RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://example.com/resource', timeout: 120)
Additionally, you can set read_timeout:
and
open_timeout:
separately.
RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://example.com/resource', read_timeout: 120, open_timeout: 240)
Request and Response objects know about HTTP cookies, and will automatically extract and set headers for them as needed:
response = RestClient.get 'http://example.com/action_which_sets_session_id' response.cookies # => {"_applicatioN_session_id" => "1234"} response2 = RestClient.post( 'http://localhost:3000/', {:param1 => "foo"}, {:cookies => {:session_id => "1234"}} ) # ...response body
The original cookie implementation was very naive and ignored most of the cookie RFC standards. New in 1.8: An HTTP::CookieJar of cookies
Response objects now carry a cookie_jar method that exposes an HTTP::CookieJar of cookies, which supports full standards compliant behavior.
Various options are supported for configuring rest-client's TLS settings. By default, rest-client will verify certificates using the system's CA store on all platforms. (This is intended to be similar to how browsers behave.) You can specify an :ssl_ca_file, :ssl_ca_path, or :ssl_cert_store to customize the certificate authorities accepted.
RestClient::Resource.new( 'https://example.com', :ssl_client_cert => OpenSSL::X509::Certificate.new(File.read("cert.pem")), :ssl_client_key => OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new(File.read("key.pem"), "passphrase, if any"), :ssl_ca_file => "ca_certificate.pem", :verify_ssl => OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER ).get
Self-signed certificates can be generated with the openssl command-line tool.
RestClient.add_before_execution_proc add a Proc to be called before each execution. It's handy if you need direct access to the HTTP request.
Example:
# Add oauth support using the oauth gem require 'oauth' access_token = ... RestClient.add_before_execution_proc do |req, params| access_token.sign! req end RestClient.get 'http://example.com'
Need caching, more advanced logging or any ability provided by Rack middleware?
Have a look at rest-client-components: github.com/crohr/rest-client-components
||| |---------------------|---------------------------------------------------------| | REST Client Team | Andy Brody | | Creator | Adam Wiggins | | Maintainers Emeriti | Lawrence Leonard Gilbert, Matthew Manning, Julien Kirch | | Major contributions | Blake Mizerany, Julien Kirch |
A great many generous folks have contributed features and patches. See AUTHORS for the full list.
Released under the MIT License: www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
“Master Shake” photo (www.flickr.com/photos/solgrundy/924205581/) by "SolGrundy"; used under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)
Code for reading Windows root certificate store derived from work by Puppet; used under terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0.