Sending a fire&forget http request in a model class

Rails
1

I know this is bad mvc, but i have a model class that needs to send a
request off to a web service. At the moment i’m building a request
string with url and params, and then doing a ‘system’ call to call curl
with the url. This feels pretty dirty though. Is there a nicer way to
just fire off an http request?

thanks
max

2

On 19 Nov 2008, at 14:23, Max W. wrote:

I know this is bad mvc, but i have a model class that needs to send a
request off to a web service. At the moment i’m building a request
string with url and params, and then doing a ‘system’ call to call
curl
with the url. This feels pretty dirty though. Is there a nicer way
to
just fire off an http request?

net/http or similar ?

Fred

3

Hey,
I would check this out:
http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/net/http/rdoc/index.html

Syntax looks something like:

http = Net::HTTP.new(“www.google.com”)
headers, body = http.get()

Hope that help
Jim Englert
http://www.jim-rants.com/coding-blog/

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Frederick C. <

4

On 20 Nov 2008, at 09:38, Max W. wrote:

l_content=‘http://ir.chazanga.com/letter/show?encoded=MTE4MiZpdCdzIHdlZG5lc2RheQ==’
-d l_email=‘[email protected]’ \

http = Net::HTTP.new(“#{domain}”)
headers, body = http.get(“#{path}?#{params}”)

Yuck. would be a lot easier to take a hash of params (ie {‘l_cid’ =>
‘1106’, ‘l_key’ => ‘cg3608898b74a4c688787ab479b8bb9f’, …} and then
call to_query on it.

Net::HTTP will also do that for you, with something like

response = Net::HTTP.start(host, port) do |http|
get = Net::HTTP::Get.new path
get.form_data = some_hash
get.content_type = “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”
http.request get
end

Fred

5

Thanks Fred

I’m not having any luck with it so far - this is the curl call i was
making (with some changes to protect the innocent):

curl http://www.l-mail.biz/scripts/lia/lia.php
-d l_cid=‘1106’
-d l_key=‘cg3608898b74a4c688787ab479b8bb9f’
-d
l_content=‘http://ir.chazanga.com/letter/show?encoded=MTE4MiZpdCdzIHdlZG5lc2RheQ==’

-d l_pb_url=‘http://ir.chazanga.com/letter/confirm’
-d l_sname=‘chazanga’
-d l_rname=‘Max W.’
-d l_rcname=‘chazanga’
-d l_raddress1=‘Suites 17 & 18’
-d l_raddress2=‘9-12 Middle Street’
-d l_rcity=‘Brighton’
-d l_rpostcode=‘BN1 3TN’
-d l_rcountry=‘3’
-d l_email=‘[email protected]’
-d l_fb_emails=‘1’
-d p_user_id=‘2054’

So, when i tried to use Net::HTTP i was trying to deal with this massive
params string. I split it up like so:

domain = “www.l-mail.biz”

path = “/scripts/lia/lia.php”

params =
“l_cid=1106&l_key=cg3608898b74a4c688787ab479b8bb9f&l_content=http://ir.chazanga.com/letter/show?encoded=MTE4MiZpdCdzIHdlZG5lc2RheQ==&l_pb_url=http://ir.chazanga.com/letter/confirm&l_sname=chazanga&l_rname=Max-Williams&l_rcname=chazanga&l_raddress1=Suites-17-18&l_raddress2=9-12-Middle-Street&l_rcity=Brighton&l_rpostcode=BN1-3TN&l_rcountry=3&[email protected]&l_fb_emails=1&p_user_id=2054”

The params string had spaces and & signs in it, so i just replaced them
with safe characters temporarily while i played with Net::HTTP (with
escaping them properly down for a later task).

I tried this:

http = Net::HTTP.new(“#{domain}”)
headers, body = http.get(“#{path}?#{params}”)

and got a 401 (Authorisation required) error back. I think maybe my
params weren’t going through properly.

6

Thanks Fred…

I totally agree, i actually build up all the params in a hash anyway.

Here it is in your recommended format. One of the params has the
complication of actually being a full url with params itself. Curl
seems to deal happily with this, i’m guessing it escapes everything
nicely. But trying this, i get the same 401 error back
(#<Net::HTTPUnauthorized 401 Authorization Required readbody=true>).

host = “www.l-mail.biz”
port = 80
path = “/scripts/lia/lia.php”

param_hash = {
:l_cid => ‘1106’,
:l_key => ‘cg3608898b74a4c688787ab479b8bb9f’,
:l_content =>
‘http://ir.chazanga.com/letter/show?encoded=MTE4MiZpdCdzIHdlZG5lc2RheQ==’,
:l_pb_url => ‘http://ir.chazanga.com/letter/confirm’,
:l_sname => ‘chazanga’,
:l_rname => ‘Max W.’,
:l_rcname => ‘chazanga’,
:l_raddress1 => ‘Suites 17 & 18’,
:l_raddress2 => ‘9-12 Middle Street’,
:l_rcity => ‘Brighton’,
:l_rpostcode => ‘BN1 3TN’,
:l_rcountry => ‘3’,
:l_email => ‘[email protected]’,
:l_fb_emails => ‘1’,
:p_user_id => ‘2054’
}

response = Net::HTTP.start(host, port) do |http|
get = Net::HTTP::Get.new path
get.form_data = param_hash
get.content_type = “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”
http.request get
end