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

New mailing list ↑

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

Requirements ↑

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:

mime-types netrc http-cookie

There are also several development dependencies. It's recommended to use bundler to manage these dependencies for hacking on rest-client.

Upgrading to rest-client 2.0 from 1.x ↑

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.

Usage: Raw URL ↑

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'

>>

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:

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 www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html) ↑

>> RestClient.get 'http://example.com/nonexistent'
Exception:

Other exceptions ↑

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:

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.

Redirection ↑

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')
=>

Manually following redirection ↑

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')
=>

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

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.)

RestClient.get('http://example.com')
➔ <RestClient::Response 200 "

Response callbacks, error handling ↑

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 }
=>

# 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

Non-normalized URIs ↑

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)

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:

See RestClient::Request's documentation for more information.

Shell ↑

The restclient shell command gives an IRB session with RestClient already loaded:




Specify a URL argument for get/post/put/delete on that resource:






Add a user and password for authenticated resources:






Create ~/.restclient for named sessions:



sinatra:




Then invoke:






Use as a one-off, curl-style:






Logging ↑



To enable logging you can:







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 ↑



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: ruby
RestClient.get('https://httpbin.org/get', params: {foo:
'bar', baz: 'qux'}) # GET
"https://httpbin.org/get?foo=bar&baz=qux" 



Basic x-www-form-urlencoded POST params: ruby >> r
= RestClient.post('https://httpbin.org/post', {foo: 'bar',
baz: 'qux'}) # POST "https://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"=>"https://httpbin.org/post"} 



JSON payload: rest-client does not speak JSON natively, so serialize your
payload to a string before passing it to rest-client. ruby >>
payload = {'name' => 'newrepo', 'description':
'A new repo'} >>
RestClient.post('https://api.github.com/user/repos',
payload.to_json, content_type: :json) => <RestClient::Response 201
"{\"id\":75149..."> 



Advanced GET params (arrays): “`ruby







r = RestClient.get('http-params.herokuapp.com/get',
params: {foo: [1,2,3]})



GET “http-params.herokuapp.com/get?foo[]=1&foo[]=2&foo[]=3” ↑



=> <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 “http-params.herokuapp.com/get?outer[foo]=123&outer[bar]=456” ↑



=> <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: ruby >>
RestClient.get('https://httpbin.org/get', params:                  
RestClient::ParamsArray.new([[:foo, 1], [:foo, 2]])) # GET
"https://httpbin.org/get?foo=1&foo=2" 



Nested ParamsArray: ruby >>
RestClient.get('https://httpbin.org/get', params:                  
{foo: RestClient::ParamsArray.new([[:a, 1], [:a, 2]])}) # GET
"https://httpbin.org/get?foo[a]=1&foo[a]=2" 



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'}




Timeouts ↑



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)




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'




More ↑



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



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.





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.