Net::HTTP post

Ruby
1

Can someone point me to an example of sending a POST request using
Net::HTTP?

I found one at
http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/net/http/rdoc/classes/Net/HTTP.html,
but this use the method post_data which, when I look at the source in
http.rb, is not a method of Net::HTTP. Maybe it’s outdated
documentation.

This is what I’ve tried. I suspect I’m not passing the form data
correctly. The response is a Net::HTTPBadRequest.

require ‘net/http’

host = ‘www.runningbuzz.com’
Net::HTTP.start(host) do |http|

data = {
‘CalcWhat’ => ‘2’,
‘timeH’ => ‘2’,
‘timeM’ => ‘57’,
‘timeS’ => ‘17’,
‘distance’ => ‘26.2’,
‘optDist’ => ‘miles’,
‘optPace’ => ‘miles’
}

response = http.post(‘pace_calculator.htm’, data)

puts response.body
end

2

Mark V. wrote:

Can someone point me to an example of sending a POST request using Net::HTTP?

I found one at http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/net/http/rdoc/classes/Net/HTTP.html,
but this use the method post_data which, when I look at the source in
http.rb, is not a method of Net::HTTP. Maybe it’s outdated
documentation.

What is your version of Ruby?

James

“Blanket statements are over-rated”

3

On 1/22/06, James B. [email protected] wrote:

Mark V. wrote:

Can someone point me to an example of sending a POST request using Net::HTTP?

I found one at http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/net/http/rdoc/classes/Net/HTTP.html,
but this use the method post_data which, when I look at the source in
http.rb, is not a method of Net::HTTP. Maybe it’s outdated
documentation.

What is your version of Ruby?

It’s 1.8.2 and I’m running under XP.

I think my problem is that I need to pass a String as the second
parameter to HTTP.post. I don’t know how to format it though. Should
it look like this?

“name1=value1&name2=value2”

This format isn’t working for me.

4

I figured out why it wasn’t working. There were two problems.

  1. The file path I passed as the first parameter to the post method
    didn’t start with a /.
  2. The HTML form I was posting to only supports GET requests, not POST.
5

Mark V. wrote:

This is what I’ve tried. I suspect I’m not passing the form data
correctly. The response is a Net::HTTPBadRequest.

There seems to be a couple of issues:

  1. Looking at the URL you specified, I’m not sure you can POST to it; as
    far as I can tell, the calculator there is implemented client-side using
    the Javascript contained in /pacecalc.js. This doesn’t necessarily mean
    it can’t accept POST requests, but it’s worth checking that first.

  2. When I run your code, I see the following HTTP:

POST pace_calculator.htm HTTP/1.1
Accept: /
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 7
Host: www.runningbuzz.com

timeM57CalcWhat2timeH2optPacemilestimeS17optDistmilesdistance26.2

That’s clearly wrong. If you look at the docs for Net/HTTP you’ll see
that “data” must be a string, not a hash. So rather than a hash, you
want a string like ‘CalcWhat=2&timeH=2’ etc. Check Net::HTTP#post.

Hope that helps,
Cheers,
Steve

6

Mark V. wrote:

I think my problem is that I need to pass a String as the second
parameter to HTTP.post. I don’t know how to format it though. Should
it look like this?

“name1=value1&name2=value2”

This format isn’t working for me.

Yep - see my other post.

You can convert from your ‘data’ hash to a suitable string using
something like:

data.to_a.collect {|k,v| k.to_s+’=’+v}.join(’&’)

HTH,
Steve

7

Stephen Hildrey wrote:

data.to_a.collect {|k,v| k.to_s+’=’+v}.join(’&’)

Oops, poor form to reply to self, etc…

I didn’t mean to have the to_a in that above!

Steve

8

It’s 1.8.2 and I’m running under XP.

I think my problem is that I need to pass a String as the second
parameter to HTTP.post. I don’t know how to format it though. Should
it look like this?

“name1=value1&name2=value2”

I think, your code should work…
This is working fine (for me):

http = Net::HTTP.new ‘www.xxx.de’
res, data = http.post ‘/index/login/’,
‘email=matthias%40kl-mailer.de&password=xxx’
if res.code == 200
puts data

regards,
Matthias