Class: RightSupport::Net::HTTPClient

A wrapper for the rest-client gem that provides timeouts that make it harder to misuse RestClient.

Even though this code relies on RestClient, the right_support gem does not depend on the rest-client gem because not all users of right_support will want to make use of this interface. If one of HTTPClient instance's method is called and RestClient is not available, an exception will be raised.

HTTPClient is a thin wrapper around the RestClient::Request class, with a few minor changes to its interface:

* initializer accepts some default request options that can be overridden per-request
* it has discrete methods for get/put/post/delete, instead of a single "request" method

 # create an instance ot HTTPClient with some default request options
 @client = HTTPClient.new()

 # GET
 xml = @client.get 'http://example.com/resource'
 # and, with timeout of 5 seconds...
 jpg = @client.get 'http://example.com/resource', {:accept => 'image/jpg', :timeout => 5}

 # authentication and SSL
 @client.get 'https://user:password@example.com/private/resource'

 # POST or PUT with a hash sends parameters as a urlencoded form body
 @client.post 'http://example.com/resource', {:param1 => 'one'}

 # nest hash parameters, add a timeout of 10 seconds (and specify "no extra headers")
 @client.post 'http://example.com/resource', {:payload => {:nested => {:param1 => 'one'}}, :timeout => 10}

 # POST and PUT with raw payloads
 @client.post 'http://example.com/resource', {:payload => 'the post body', :headers => {:content_type => 'text/plain'}}
 @client.post 'http://example.com/resource.xml', {:payload => xml_doc}
 @client.put 'http://example.com/resource.pdf', {:payload => File.read('my.pdf'), :headers => {:content_type => 'application/pdf'}}

 # DELETE
 @client.delete 'http://example.com/resource'

 # retrieve the response http code and headers
 res = @client.get 'http://example.com/some.jpg'
 res.code                    # => 200
 res.headers[:content_type]  # => 'image/jpg'