This class is the base class for Net::HTTP request classes.

About the Examples

Returned Responses

Method Net::HTTP.get_response returns an instance of one of the subclasses of Net::HTTPResponse:

Net::HTTP.get_response(uri)
# => #<Net::HTTPOK 200 OK readbody=true>
Net::HTTP.get_response(hostname, '/nosuch')
# => #<Net::HTTPNotFound 404 Not Found readbody=true>

As does method Net::HTTP#request:

req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri)
Net::HTTP.start(hostname) do |http|
  http.request(req)
end # => #<Net::HTTPOK 200 OK readbody=true>

Class Net::HTTPResponse includes module Net::HTTPHeader, which provides access to response header values via (among others):

  • Hash-like method [].

  • Specific reader methods, such as content_type.

Examples:

res = Net::HTTP.get_response(uri) # => #<Net::HTTPOK 200 OK readbody=true>
res['Content-Type']               # => "text/html; charset=UTF-8"
res.content_type                  # => "text/html"

Response Subclasses

Class Net::HTTPResponse has a subclass for each HTTP status code. You can look up the response class for a given code:

Net::HTTPResponse::CODE_TO_OBJ['200'] # => Net::HTTPOK
Net::HTTPResponse::CODE_TO_OBJ['400'] # => Net::HTTPBadRequest
Net::HTTPResponse::CODE_TO_OBJ['404'] # => Net::HTTPNotFound

And you can retrieve the status code for a response object:

Net::HTTP.get_response(uri).code                 # => "200"
Net::HTTP.get_response(hostname, '/nosuch').code # => "404"

The response subclasses (indentation shows class hierarchy):

There is also the Net::HTTPBadResponse exception which is raised when there is a protocol error.

Constants
No documentation available
No documentation available
Attributes

The HTTP version supported by the server.

Read

The HTTP result code string. For example, ‘302’. You can also determine the response type by examining which response subclass the response object is an instance of.

Read

The HTTP result message sent by the server. For example, ‘Not Found’.

uri

Read

The URI used to fetch this response. The response URI is only available if a URI was used to create the request.

Read & Write

Set to true automatically when the request did not contain an Accept-Encoding header from the user.

The encoding to use for the response body. If Encoding, use that encoding. If other true value, attempt to detect the appropriate encoding, and use that.

Read & Write

Whether to ignore EOF when reading bodies with a specified Content-Length header.

Class Methods

true if the response has a body.

No documentation available
No documentation available
No documentation available
Instance Methods

Returns the full entity body.

Calling this method a second or subsequent time will return the string already read.

http.request_get('/index.html') {|res|
  puts res.body
}

http.request_get('/index.html') {|res|
  p res.body.object_id   # 538149362
  p res.body.object_id   # 538149362
}

Because it may be necessary to modify the body, Eg, decompression this method facilitates that.

Set the encoding to use for the response body. If given a String, find the related Encoding.

No documentation available

Gets the entity body returned by the remote HTTP server.

If a block is given, the body is passed to the block, and the body is provided in fragments, as it is read in from the socket.

If dest argument is given, response is read into that variable, with dest#<< method (it could be String or IO, or any other object responding to <<).

Calling this method a second or subsequent time for the same HTTPResponse object will return the value already read.

http.request_get('/index.html') {|res|
  puts res.read_body
}

http.request_get('/index.html') {|res|
  p res.read_body.object_id   # 538149362
  p res.read_body.object_id   # 538149362
}

# using iterator
http.request_get('/index.html') {|res|
  res.read_body do |segment|
    print segment
  end
}

Raises an HTTP error if the response is not 2xx (success).