Curb - Libcurl bindings for Ruby

• rubyforge rdoc
• rubyforge project
• github project

Curb (probably CUrl-RuBy or something) provides Ruby-language bindings for the libcurl(3), a fully-featured client-side URL transfer library. cURL and libcurl live at http://curl.haxx.se/ .

Curb is a work-in-progress, and currently only supports libcurl's 'easy' and 'multi' modes.

License

Curb is copyright (c)2006 Ross Bamford, and released under the terms of the Ruby license. See the LICENSE file for the gory details.

You will need

• A working Ruby installation (1.8+, tested with 1.8.6, 1.8.7, 1.9.1, and 1.9.2)
• A working (lib)curl installation, with development stuff (7.5+, tested with 7.19.x)
• A sane build environment (e.g. gcc, make)

Installation...

... will usually be as simple as:

$ gem install curb

Or, if you downloaded the archive:

$ rake install 

If you have a wierd setup, you might need extconf options. In this case, pass them like so:

$ rake install EXTCONF_OPTS='--with-curl-dir=/path/to/libcurl --prefix=/what/ever'

Curb is tested only on GNU/Linux x86 and Mac OSX - YMMV on other platforms. If you do use another platform and experience problems, or if you can expand on the above instructions, please report the issue at http://github.com/taf2/curb/issues

On Ubuntu, the dependencies can be satisfied by installing the following packages:

$ sudo apt-get install libcurl3 libcurl3-gnutls libcurl4-openssl-dev

Curb has fairly extensive RDoc comments in the source. You can build the documentation with:

$ rake doc

Usage & examples

Curb provides two classes:

• Curl::Easy - simple API, for day-to-day tasks.
• Curl::Multi - more advanced API, for operating on multiple URLs simultaneously.

Super simple API (less typing)

http = Curl.get("http://www.google.com/")
puts http.body_str

http = Curl.post("http://www.google.com/", {:foo => "bar"})
puts http.body_str

http = Curl.get("http://www.google.com/") do|http|
  http.headers['Cookie'] = 'foo=1;bar=2'
end
puts http.body_str

Simple fetch via HTTP:

c = Curl::Easy.perform("http://www.google.co.uk")
puts c.body_str

Same thing, more manual:

c = Curl::Easy.new("http://www.google.co.uk")
c.perform
puts c.body_str

Additional config:

Curl::Easy.perform("http://www.google.co.uk") do |curl| 
  curl.headers["User-Agent"] = "myapp-0.0"
  curl.verbose = true
end

Same thing, more manual:

c = Curl::Easy.new("http://www.google.co.uk") do |curl| 
  curl.headers["User-Agent"] = "myapp-0.0"
  curl.verbose = true
end

c.perform

HTTP basic authentication:

c = Curl::Easy.new("http://github.com/")
c.http_auth_types = :basic
c.username = 'foo'
c.password = 'bar'
c.perform

Supplying custom handlers:

c = Curl::Easy.new("http://www.google.co.uk")

c.on_body { |data| print(data) }
c.on_header { |data| print(data) }

c.perform

Reusing Curls:

c = Curl::Easy.new

["http://www.google.co.uk", "http://www.ruby-lang.org/"].map do |url|
  c.url = url
  c.perform
  c.body_str
end

HTTP POST form:

c = Curl::Easy.http_post("http://my.rails.box/thing/create",
                         Curl::PostField.content('thing[name]', 'box'),
                         Curl::PostField.content('thing[type]', 'storage'))

HTTP POST file upload:

c = Curl::Easy.new("http://my.rails.box/files/upload")
c.multipart_form_post = true
c.http_post(Curl::PostField.file('thing[file]', 'myfile.rb'))

Multi Interface (Basic HTTP GET):

# make multiple GET requests
easy_options = {:follow_location => true}
multi_options = {:pipeline => true}

Curl::Multi.get('url1','url2','url3','url4','url5', easy_options, multi_options) do|easy|
  # do something interesting with the easy response
  puts easy.last_effective_url
end

Multi Interface (Basic HTTP POST):

# make multiple POST requests
easy_options = {:follow_location => true, :multipart_form_post => true}
multi_options = {:pipeline => true}

url_fields = [
  { :url => 'url1', :post_fields => {'f1' => 'v1'} },
  { :url => 'url2', :post_fields => {'f1' => 'v1'} },
  { :url => 'url3', :post_fields => {'f1' => 'v1'} }
]

Curl::Multi.post(url_fields, easy_options, multi_options) do|easy|
  # do something interesting with the easy response
  puts easy.last_effective_url
end

Multi Interface (Advanced):

responses = {}
requests = ["http://www.google.co.uk/", "http://www.ruby-lang.org/"]
m = Curl::Multi.new
# add a few easy handles
requests.each do |url|
  responses[url] = ""
  c = Curl::Easy.new(url) do|curl|
    curl.follow_location = true
    curl.on_body{|data| responses[url] << data; data.size }
    curl.on_success {|easy| puts "success, add more easy handles" }
  end
  m.add(c)
end

m.perform do
  puts "idling... can do some work here"
end

requests.each do|url|
  puts responses[url]
end

Easy Callbacks

• on_success is called when the response code is 20x
• on_failure is called when the response code is not success, including redirects e.g. 30x
• on_complete is called in all cases.