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.

New mailing list ↑

We have a new email list for announcements, hosted by Groups.io.

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:

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:

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'

>> 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')
    }
  })

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: RestClient::NotFound: 404 Not Found

>> begin
     RestClient.get 'http://example.com/nonexistent'
   rescue RestClient::ExceptionWithResponse => e
     e.response
   end
=> <RestClient::Response 404 "<!doctype h...">

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: 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.

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')
=> <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"]

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')
=> 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":..."

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 "<!doctype h...">

begin
 RestClient.get('http://example.com/notfound')
rescue RestClient::ExceptionWithResponse => err
  err.response
end
➔ <RestClient::Response 404 "<!doctype h...">

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 }
=> <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!(&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.

Streaming request payload ↑

RestClient will try to stream any file-like payload rather than reading it into memory. This happens through RestClient::Payload::Streamed, which is automatically called internally by RestClient::Payload.generate on anything with a read method.

>> r = RestClient.put('http://httpbin.org/put', File.open('/tmp/foo.txt', 'r'),
                      content_type: 'text/plain')
=> <RestClient::Response 200 "{\n  \"args\":...">

In Multipart requests, RestClient will also stream file handles passed as Hash (or new in 2.1 ParamsArray).

>> r = RestClient.put('http://httpbin.org/put',
                      {file_a: File.open('a.txt', 'r'),
                       file_b: File.open('b.txt', 'r')})
=> <RestClient::Response 200 "{\n  \"args\":...">

# received by server as two file uploads with multipart/form-data
>> JSON.parse(r)['files'].keys
=> ['file_a', 'file_b']

Streaming responses ↑

Normally, when you use RestClient.get or the lower level RestClient::Request.execute method: :get to retrieve data, the entire response is buffered in memory and returned as the response to the call.

However, if you are retrieving a large amount of data, for example a Docker image, an iso, or any other large file, you may want to stream the response directly to disk rather than loading it in memory. If you have a very large file, it may become impossible to load it into memory.

There are two main ways to do this:

raw_response, saves into Tempfile ↑

If you pass raw_response: true to RestClient::Request.execute, it will save the response body to a temporary file (using Tempfile) and return a RestClient::RawResponse object rather than a RestClient::Response.

Note that the tempfile created by Tempfile.new will be in Dir.tmpdir (usually /tmp/), which you can override to store temporary files in a different location. This file will be unlinked when it is dereferenced.

If logging is enabled, this will also print download progress. New in 2.1: Customize the interval with :stream_log_percent (defaults to 10 for printing a message every 10% complete).

For example:

>> raw = RestClient::Request.execute(
           method: :get,
           url: 'http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04.2/ubuntu-16.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso',
           raw_response: true)
=> <RestClient::RawResponse @code=200, @file=#<Tempfile:/tmp/rest-client.20170522-5346-1pptjm1>, @request=<RestClient::Request @method="get", @url="http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04.2/ubuntu-16.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso">>
>> raw.file.size
=> 1554186240
>> raw.file.path
=> "/tmp/rest-client.20170522-5346-1pptjm1"
raw.file.path
=> "/tmp/rest-client.20170522-5346-1pptjm1"

>> require 'digest/sha1'
>> Digest::SHA1.file(raw.file.path).hexdigest
=> "4375b73e3a1aa305a36320ffd7484682922262b3"

block_response, receives raw Net::HTTPResponse ↑

If you want to stream the data from the response to a file as it comes, rather than entirely in memory, you can also pass RestClient::Request.execute a parameter :block_response to which you pass a block/proc. This block receives the raw unmodified Net::HTTPResponse object from Net::HTTP, which you can use to stream directly to a file as each chunk is received.

Note that this bypasses all the usual HTTP status code handling, so you will want to do you own checking for HTTP 20x response codes, redirects, etc.

The following is an example:

ruby File.open('/some/output/file', 'w') {|f| block = proc { |response| response.read_body do |chunk| f.write chunk end } RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://example.com/some/really/big/file.img', block_response: block) }

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://localhost4567
  rack:
    url: http://localhost9292
  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 globally you can:

RestClient.log = STDOUT

$ RESTCLIENT_LOG=stdout path/to/my/program

You can also set individual loggers when instantiating a Resource or making an individual request:

resource = RestClient::Resource.new 'http://example.com/resource', log: Logger.new(STDOUT)

RestClient::Request.execute(method: :get, url: 'http://example.com/foo', log: Logger.new(STDERR))

All options produce 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:

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:

>> 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.

>> 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):

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

>> r = RestClient.get('https://http-params.herokuapp.com/get', params: {outer: {foo: 123, bar: 456}})
# GET "https://http-params.herokuapp.com/get?outer[foo]=123&outer[bar]=456"
=> <RestClient::Response 200 "Method: GET...">
>> puts r.body
...
query_string: "outer[foo]=123&outer[bar]=456"
decoded:      "outer[foo]=123&outer[bar]=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:

>> 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:

>> 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: opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Photo of the International Space Station was produced by NASA and is in the public domain.

Code for reading Windows root certificate store derived from work by Puppet; used under terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0.