REST Client -- simple DSL for accessing HTTP and REST resources

A simple HTTP and REST client for Ruby, inspired by the Sinatra's microframework style of specifying actions: get, put, post, delete.

Main page: https://github.com/rest-client/rest-client
Mailing list: https://groups.io/g/rest-client

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Requirements

MRI Ruby 1.9.3 and newer are supported. Alternative interpreters compatible with 1.9+ should work as well.

Earlier Ruby versions such as 1.8.7 and 1.9.2 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.

Usage: Raw URL

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'
response.code
➔ 200
response.cookies
➔ {"Foo"=>"BAR", "QUUX"=>"QUUUUX"}
response.headers
➔ {:content_type=>"text/html; charset=utf-8", :cache_control=>"private" ...
response.to_str
➔ \n<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN\"\n   \"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd\">\n\n<html ....

RestClient.post( url,
  {
    :transfer => {
      :path => '/foo/bar',
      :owner => 'that_guy',
      :group => 'those_guys'
    },
     :upload => {
      :file => File.new(path, 'rb')
    }
  })

Passing advanced options

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

Multipart

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}

Usage: ActiveResource-Style

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.

Usage: Resource Nesting

site = RestClient::Resource.new('http://example.com')
site['posts/1/comments'].post 'Good article.', :content_type => 'text/plain'

See RestClient::Resource docs for details.

Exceptions (see http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html)

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::Exception 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/resource'
➔ RestClient::ResourceNotFound: RestClient::ResourceNotFound

begin
  RestClient.get 'http://example.com/resource'
rescue => e
  e.response
end
➔ 404 Resource Not Found | text/html 282 bytes

Result handling

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: 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...">

Response callbacks

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/resource'){|response, request, result| response }
➔ 404 Resource Not Found | text/html 282 bytes

# Manage a specific error code
RestClient.get('http://my-rest-service.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
}

# 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."
RestClient.get('http://my-rest-service.com/resource'){ |response, request, result, &block|
  if [301, 302, 307].include? response.code
    response.follow_redirection(request, result, &block)
  else
    response.return!(request, result, &block)
  end
}

Non-normalized URIs

If you need to normalize URIs, e.g. to work with International Resource Identifiers (IRIs), use the addressable gem (http://addressable.rubyforge.org/api/) in your code:

  require 'addressable/uri'
  RestClient.get(Addressable::URI.parse("http://www.詹姆斯.com/").normalize.to_str)

Lower-level access

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.

Shell

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://example.com
>> put '/resource', 'data'

Add a user and password for authenticated resources:

$ restclient https://example.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://example.com/resource > output_body

$ restclient put http://example.com/resource < input_body

Logging

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.

Proxy

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

Query parameters

Request objects know about query parameters and will automatically add them to the URL for GET, HEAD and DELETE requests, escaping the keys and values as needed:

RestClient.get 'http://example.com/resource', :params => {:foo => 'bar', :baz => 'qux'}
# will GET http://example.com/resource?foo=bar&baz=qux

Headers

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'}

Cookies

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

Full cookie jar support (new in 1.8)

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.

SSL/TLS support

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.

SSL Client Certificates

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.

Hook

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: http://github.com/crohr/rest-client-components

Credits


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.

Legal

Released under the MIT License: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

"Master Shake" photo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/solgrundy/924205581/) by "SolGrundy"; used under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license (http://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.

huohongchuan/rest-client