httpclient: A Ruby HTTP client for serious business

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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 HTTPClient instance 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 .

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