# Net::HTTP.get\_response hangs with particular url

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/net-http-get-response-hangs-with-particular-url/91025>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [April 3, 2007, 9:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/net-http-get-response-hangs-with-particular-url/91025 "2007-04-03T21:58:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![erik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b5ac83/32.png) [@erik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/erik)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 9:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/net-http-get-response-hangs-with-particular-url/91025/1 "2007-04-03T21:58:33Z")

</div>

This seems bizar, the first get\_response() to [apple.com](http://apple.com) goes fine, the  
2nd hangs indefinitely. It hangs on two different machines in different  
network segments.

require ‘net/http’  
require ‘uri’

response = Net::HTTP.get\_response( URI.parse(‘[http://www.apple.com](http://www.apple.com)’) )  
puts response.class # Net::HTTPOK  
puts response.code # 200

response = Net::HTTP.get\_response(  
URI.parse(‘[http://content.digitalwell.washington.edu/isilon/1/8/45/459ffc6f-3f91-46f5-af58-155791dad3b4.mp3](http://content.digitalwell.washington.edu/isilon/1/8/45/459ffc6f-3f91-46f5-af58-155791dad3b4.mp3)’)  
)  
puts response.class  
puts response.code

(I have no affiliation with the hanging url, it’s just a url to I came  
across in my server logs while processing RSS feed enclosures).

Pressing ctrl-c gives:

/opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:133:in `sysread': Interrupt from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:133:in `rbuf\_fill’  
from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:56:in `timeout' from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout’  
from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:132:in  
`rbuf_fill' from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:86:in `read’  
from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2180:in  
`read_body_0' from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2141:in `read\_body’  
from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2166:in `body' from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2105:in `reading\_body’  
from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:1048:in `request' from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:944:in `request\_get’  
from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:380:in  
`get_response' from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:545:in `start’  
from /opt/ruby-1.8.4/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:379:in  
`get\_response’  
from test.rb:8

Anyone?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![erik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b5ac83/32.png) [@erik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/erik)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2007, 10:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/net-http-get-response-hangs-with-particular-url/91025/2 "2007-04-03T22:29:15Z")

</div>

I’m not positive, but I would point out that the URL in question is an  
82MB mp3. I was under the impression that getting a HTTPResponse  
actually downloaded the body of the requested page/file. So perhaps the  
response is just taking a long time in arriving? My connection would  
need more than 10 minutes for this to return (though I admit my error is  
different when I press control-c)

Dan

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![erik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/b5ac83/32.png) [@erik](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/erik)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2007, 8:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/net-http-get-response-hangs-with-particular-url/91025/3 "2007-04-04T08:34:10Z")

</div>

Dan Z. wrote:

> I’m not positive, but I would point out that the URL in question is an  
> 82MB mp3. I was under the impression that getting a HTTPResponse  
> actually downloaded the body of the requested page/file. So perhaps the  
> response is just taking a long time in arriving? My connection would  
> need more than 10 minutes for this to return (though I admit my error is  
> different when I press control-c)
> 
> Dan

Hi Dan,

My connection to this file seems much worse than yours, I just tried it  
with curl and it took 50 minutes! That’s why it took so incredibly long!

By the way, I came across this issue while looking for a clean and  
simple way to (1) catch redirects and (2) test whether an object is  
available for download on a certain location.

I hereby post a snippet who does just that, maybe it helps other folks  
who are looking for this solution and stumble on long waits for  
get\_response() to finish:

require ‘open-uri’  
require ‘timeout’

def test( \_url )  
begin  
content\_length = nil  
bytes\_read = nil  
Timeout::timeout( 10 ) do | length |  
open( \_url, “User-Agent” =\> “test”,  
:content\_length\_proc =\> lambda { |cl| content\_length = cl },  
:progress\_proc =\> lambda { |br|  
bytes\_read = br  
raise HadEnoughException if bytes\_read \> 0 } )  
end  
rescue HadEnoughException  
puts “HadEnoughException”  
rescue Timeout::Error  
puts “Timed out on [#{\_url}]”  
rescue OpenURI::HTTPError  
puts “Cannot open [#{\_url}]”  
rescue Exception =\> e  
puts “Exception #{e.message}”  
end  
return content\_length, bytes\_read  
end

class HadEnoughException \< Exception  
end

content\_length, bytes\_read = test(‘[http://apple.com](http://apple.com)’)  
puts content\_length, bytes\_read

# outputs HadEnoughException 31805 784 (values will be different on your

computer)

content\_length, bytes\_read =  
test(‘[http://content.digitalwell.washington.edu/isilon/1/8/45/459ffc6f-3f91-46f5-af58-155791dad3b4.mp3](http://content.digitalwell.washington.edu/isilon/1/8/45/459ffc6f-3f91-46f5-af58-155791dad3b4.mp3)’)  
puts content\_length, bytes\_read

# outputs HadEnoughException 86136581 769 (values will be different on

your computer)

Note that not all web servers return the content\_length in the http  
header, so this value may be nil