httpclient: A Ruby HTTP client for serious business
While debugging an intricate issue with failed HTTP requests I have come to appreciate the more advanced features of the httpclient Show archive.org snapshot Rubygem.
The gem is much more than a lightweight wrapper around Ruby's net/http. In particular:
- A single 
HTTPClientinstance can re-use persistent connections across threads in a thread-safe way. - Has a custom and configurable SSL certificate store (which you probably want to disable by default)
 - Manages cookies
 - Can make asynchronous requests (spins off a thread internally)
 - Allow to set a debugging device where all request data will be piped to
 
More analysis of httpclient internals can be found in the attached article Show archive.org snapshot .