https://github.com/httprb/http

HTTP (The Gem! a.k.a. http.rb) - a fast Ruby HTTP client with a chainable API, streaming support, and timeouts
https://github.com/httprb/http

Keywords

client http http-client ruby

Keywords from Contributors

activerecord mvc activejob rack rubygems crash-reporting rspec rubocop background-jobs code-formatter

Last synced: about 2 hours ago
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HTTP (The Gem! a.k.a. http.rb) - a fast Ruby HTTP client with a chainable API, streaming support, and timeouts

Host: GitHub
URL: https://github.com/httprb/http
Owner: httprb
License: mit
Created: 2011-10-06T04:19:10.000Z (over 14 years ago)
Default Branch: main
Last Pushed: 2026-04-20T18:20:44.000Z (10 days ago)
Last Synced: 2026-04-27T19:33:01.972Z (3 days ago)
Topics: client, http, http-client, ruby
Language: Ruby
Homepage:
Size: 2.3 MB
Stars: 3,088
Watchers: 43
Forks: 326
Open Issues: 24
Releases: 2
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
- Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md
- License: LICENSE.txt
- Security: SECURITY.md

About

HTTP (The Gem! a.k.a. http.rb) is an easy-to-use client library for making requests
from Ruby. It uses a simple method chaining system for building requests, similar to
Python's Requests.

Under the hood, http.rb uses the llhttp parser, a fast HTTP parsing native extension.
This library isn't just yet another wrapper around Net::HTTP. It implements the HTTP
protocol natively and outsources the parsing to native extensions.

Why http.rb?

Clean API: http.rb offers an easy-to-use API that should be a
breath of fresh air after using something like Net::HTTP.
Maturity: http.rb is one of the most mature Ruby HTTP clients, supporting
features like persistent connections and fine-grained timeouts.
Performance: using native parsers and a clean, lightweight implementation,
http.rb achieves high performance while implementing HTTP in Ruby instead of C.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "http"

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install http

Inside of your Ruby program do:

require "http"

...to pull it in as a dependency.

Documentation

Please see the http.rb wiki
for more detailed documentation and usage notes.

The following API documentation is also available:

Basic Usage

Here's some simple examples to get you started:

>> HTTP.get("https://github.com").to_s
=> "\n\n\n<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html lang=\"en\" class=\"\">\n  <head prefix=\"o..."

That's all it takes! To obtain an HTTP::Response object instead of the response
body, all we have to do is omit the #to_s on the end:

>> HTTP.get("https://github.com")
=> #<HTTP::Response/1.1 200 OK {"Server"=>"GitHub.com", "Date"=>"Tue, 10 May...>

We can also obtain an HTTP::Response::Body object for this response:

>> HTTP.get("https://github.com").body
=> #<HTTP::Response::Body:3ff756862b48 @streaming=false>

The response body can be streamed with HTTP::Response::Body#readpartial.
In practice, you'll want to bind the HTTP::Response::Body to a local variable
and call #readpartial on it repeatedly until it returns nil:

>> body = HTTP.get("https://github.com").body
=> #<HTTP::Response::Body:3ff756862b48 @streaming=false>
>> body.readpartial
=> "\n\n\n<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html lang=\"en\" class=\"\">\n  <head prefix=\"o..."
>> body.readpartial
=> "\" href=\"/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png\">\n    <link rel=\"apple-touch-ic..."
# ...
>> body.readpartial
=> nil

Pattern Matching

Response objects support Ruby's pattern matching:

case HTTP.get("https://api.example.com/users")
in { status: 200..299, body: body }
  JSON.parse(body.to_s)
in { status: 404 }
  nil
in { status: 400.. }
  raise "request failed"
end

Pattern matching is also supported on HTTP::Response::Status, HTTP::Headers,
HTTP::ContentType, and HTTP::URI.

Base URI

Set a base URI to avoid repeating the scheme and host in every request:

api = HTTP.base_uri("https://api.example.com/v1")
api.get("users")       # GET https://api.example.com/v1/users
api.get("users/1")     # GET https://api.example.com/v1/users/1

Relative paths are resolved per RFC 3986.
Combine with persistent to reuse the connection:

HTTP.base_uri("https://api.example.com/v1").persistent do |http|
  http.get("users")
  http.get("posts")
end

Thread Safety

Configured sessions are safe to share across threads:

# Build a session once, use it from any thread
session = HTTP.headers("Accept" => "application/json")
              .timeout(10)
              .auth("Bearer token")

threads = 10.times.map do
  Thread.new { session.get("https://example.com/api/data") }
end
threads.each(&:join)

Chainable configuration methods (.headers, .timeout, .auth, etc.) return
an HTTP::Session, which creates a fresh HTTP::Client for every request.

Persistent connections (HTTP.persistent) return an HTTP::Session that pools
one HTTP::Client per origin. The session itself is not thread-safe. For
thread-safe persistent connections, use the
connection_pool gem:

pool = ConnectionPool.new(size: 5) { HTTP.persistent("https://example.com") }
pool.with { |http| http.get("/path") }

Cross-origin redirects are handled transparently — the session opens a separate
persistent connection for each origin encountered during a redirect chain:

HTTP.persistent("https://example.com").follow do |http|
  http.get("/moved-to-other-domain")  # follows redirect across origins
end

Supported Ruby Versions

This library aims to support and is [tested against][build-link]
the following Ruby versions:

Ruby 3.2
Ruby 3.3
Ruby 3.4
Ruby 4.0

If something doesn't work on one of these versions, it's a bug.

This library may inadvertently work (or seem to work) on other Ruby versions,
however support will only be provided for the versions listed above.

If you would like this library to support another Ruby version or
implementation, you may volunteer to be a maintainer. Being a maintainer
entails making sure all tests run and pass on that implementation. When
something breaks on your implementation, you will be responsible for providing
patches in a timely fashion. If critical issues for a particular implementation
exist at the time of a major release, support for that Ruby version may be
dropped.

Upgrading

See UPGRADING.md for a detailed migration guide between major versions.

Security

See SECURITY.md for reporting vulnerabilities.

Contributing to http.rb

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines, or the quick version:

Fork http.rb on GitHub
Make your changes
Ensure all tests pass (bundle exec rake)
Send a pull request
If we like them we'll merge them
If we've accepted a patch, feel free to ask for commit access!

Copyright

Owner metadata

Name: http.rb
Login: httprb
Email:
Kind: organization
Description: Projects implementing HTTP in pure Ruby
Website:
Location:
Twitter:
Company:
Icon url: https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/10374575?v=4
Repositories: 5
Last ynced at: 2024-03-25T20:35:05.614Z
Profile URL: https://github.com/httprb

GitHub Events

Total

Release event: 1
Delete event: 12
Pull request event: 18
Fork event: 8
Issues event: 43
Watch event: 76
Issue comment event: 63
Push event: 54
Gollum event: 1
Pull request review event: 14
Pull request review comment event: 10
Create event: 13

Last Year

Release event: 1
Delete event: 12
Pull request event: 13
Fork event: 5
Issues event: 38
Watch event: 52
Issue comment event: 44
Push event: 51
Pull request review comment event: 7
Pull request review event: 8
Create event: 13

Committers metadata

Last synced: 24 days ago

Total Commits: 1,289
Total Committers: 129
Avg Commits per committer: 9.992
Development Distribution Score (DDS): 0.666

Commits in past year: 104
Committers in past year: 5
Avg Commits per committer in past year: 20.8
Development Distribution Score (DDS) in past year: 0.115

Name	Email	Commits
Aleksey V Zapparov	i**i@m**g	430
Tony Arcieri	b**e@g**m	277
Erik Berlin	s**k@g**m	157
Janko Marohnić	j**c@g**m	47
Sam Phippen	s**n@g**m	39
Bernard Lambeau	b**u@g**m	34
Peter Williams	p**a@b**g	31
Zach Anker	z**r@s**m	26
Tony Arcieri	t**i@s**m	19
Piotr Boniecki	p**r@p**m	10
jwinter	j**r@g**m	9
Paul Sadauskas	p**s@g**m	9
Juanito Fatas	k**0@g**m	8
Ezekiel Templin	z**e@t**n	7
Connor Dunn	c**d@s**m	7
Christian Schmidt	g**b@c**k	5
Jason Nochlin	h**t@g**m	5
Olle Jonsson	o**n@g**m	5
Ori Pekelman	o**i@p**m	5
Joshua Flanagan	j**n@g**m	4
Kyle King	k**g@g**m	4
Rick Song	r**g@g**m	4
Ryan Hosford	t**d@g**m	4
Bryan Powell	b**n@m**m	4
Tyler Montgomery	t**y@g**m	3
Smudge	n**n@n**m	3
Nicolas Leger	n****r	3
Mike Evans	m**e@u**m	3
Michael Gee	m**e@g**m	3
Matthew Witek	m**t@m**m	3
and 99 more...

Committer domains:

Issue and Pull Request metadata

Last synced: about 1 month ago

Total issues: 91
Total pull requests: 117
Average time to close issues: over 1 year
Average time to close pull requests: 5 months
Total issue authors: 72
Total pull request authors: 60
Average comments per issue: 4.75
Average comments per pull request: 2.44
Merged pull request: 85
Bot issues: 0
Bot pull requests: 0

Past year issues: 11
Past year pull requests: 19
Past year average time to close issues: about 8 hours
Past year average time to close pull requests: 14 days
Past year issue authors: 9
Past year pull request authors: 6
Past year average comments per issue: 1.36
Past year average comments per pull request: 1.0
Past year merged pull request: 14
Past year bot issues: 0
Past year bot pull requests: 0

More stats: https://issues.ecosyste.ms/repositories/lookup?url=https://github.com/httprb/http

Top Issue Authors

ixti (11)
tarcieri (5)
ksylvest (2)
bkuhlmann (2)
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shaicoleman (2)
souk4711 (1)
hugopassos (1)
tablecell (1)
james-em (1)
unikitty37 (1)
Linuus (1)
chrismanderson (1)
alanhala (1)

Top Pull Request Authors

ixti (16)
tarcieri (12)
c960657 (7)
hakanensari (5)
benubois (4)
sebyx07 (4)
koheisg (3)
bryanp (3)
CallieAvery (2)
drwl (2)
tomprats (2)
omkarmoghe (2)
sferik (2)
TheBlackArroVV (2)
Bertg (2)

Top Issue Labels

Improvement (10)
Bug (6)
Feature (4)
Pick Me! (3)
Security (3)
Discussion (2)
Not a bug (1)
Regression (1)
Question (1)

Top Pull Request Labels

Feature (3)
Discussion (1)

Package metadata

Total packages: 13
Total downloads:
- rubygems: 395,399,707 total
Total docker downloads: 3,641,498,960
Total dependent packages: 814 (may contain duplicates)
Total dependent repositories: 17,404 (may contain duplicates)
Total versions: 316
Total maintainers: 3
Total advisories: 1

gem.coop: http

An easy-to-use client library for making requests from Ruby. It uses a simple method chaining system for building requests, similar to Python's Requests.

Homepage: https://github.com/httprb/http
Documentation: http://www.rubydoc.info/gems/http/
Licenses: MIT
Latest release: 6.0.2 (published about 1 month ago)
Last Synced: 2026-04-06T16:21:34.002Z (24 days ago)
Versions: 110
Dependent Packages: 0
Dependent Repositories: 0
Downloads: 197,728,989 Total
Docker Downloads: 1,820,749,480
Rankings:
- Dependent repos count: 0.0%
- Dependent packages count: 0.0%
- Downloads: 0.129%
- Average: 0.341%
- Stargazers count: 0.428%
- Forks count: 1.147%
Maintainers (3)
- sferik
- ixti
- tarcieri

rubygems.org: http