I would like to take information from another website. Therefore (maybe) I should make a request to that website (in my case a HTTP GET request) and receive the response.
How can I make this in Ruby on Rails?
If it is possible, is it a correct approach to use in my controllers?
You can use Ruby's Net::HTTP
class:
require 'net/http'
url = URI.parse('http://www.example.com/index.html')
req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url.to_s)
res = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port) {|http|
http.request(req)
}
puts res.body
Net::HTTP is built into Ruby, but let's face it, often it's easier not to use its cumbersome 1980s style and try a higher level alternative:
- HTTP Gem
- HTTParty
- RestClient
- Excon
- Feedjira (RSS only)
OpenURI is the best; it's as simple as
require 'open-uri'
response = open('http://example.com').read
require 'net/http'
result = Net::HTTP.get(URI.parse('http://www.example.com/about.html'))
# or
result = Net::HTTP.get(URI.parse('http://www.example.com'), '/about.html')
I prefer httpclient over Net::HTTP.
client = HTTPClient.new
puts client.get_content('http://www.example.com/index.html')
HTTParty is a good choice if you're making a class that's a client for a service. It's a convenient mixin that gives you 90% of what you need. See how short the Google and Twitter clients are in the examples.
And to answer your second question: no, I wouldn't put this functionality in a controller--I'd use a model instead if possible to encapsulate the particulars (perhaps using HTTParty) and simply call it from the controller.
My favorite two ways to grab the contents of URLs are either OpenURI or Typhoeus.
OpenURI because it's everywhere, and Typhoeus because it's very flexible and powerful.
Here is the code that works if you are making a REST api call behind a proxy:
require "uri"
require 'net/http'
proxy_host = '<proxy addr>'
proxy_port = '<proxy_port>'
proxy_user = '<username>'
proxy_pass = '<password>'
uri = URI.parse("https://saucelabs.com:80/rest/v1/users/<username>")
proxy = Net::HTTP::Proxy(proxy_host, proxy_port, proxy_user, proxy_pass)
req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.path)
req.basic_auth(<sauce_username>,<sauce_password>)
result = proxy.start(uri.host,uri.port) do |http|
http.request(req)
end
puts result.body