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HTTP Proxies and Ruby

Posted: May 10, 2011 / in: Nuts and Bolts / No comments

ruby-logo-160You are located behind a proxy server and you want your Ruby application to access Internet resources by utilizing HTTP/HTTPs?

This recipe shows you how to cope with this problem.

Overview

Private networks often require internal applications explicitly to utilize Proxy servers. Ruby provides a build-in support for standard proxy servers with and without user authentication.

If you are reqired to support propritary proxy protocols like NTLM, there are solutions available, too. But this article cares about standard proxy-servers, only.

Talk to Proxy Servers

…without Authentication

The following script is reading the proxy settings from the process environment.

Applications on Linux systems generally support the utilization of proxy servers by analysing the environment variable ‘http_proxy‘. It contains the proxy configuration in the following form: http://proxy_host[:proxy_port].

 

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
 
# fetch setting from environment variable
# set to: http://proxy_host:proxy_port
http_proxy = ENV["http_proxy"]
proxy = URI.parse(http_proxy)
url = URI.parse('http://www.linux-support.com')
res = Net::HTTP::Proxy(proxy.host, proxy.port).start(
      url.host, url.port) { |http|
  http.get('/')
}
 
puts res.body
 

 

By executing the previous script you will receive the following result (the script did request an HTML document via a proxy server configured at command line):

 

$ ruby http-proxy-simple.rb
<html>
<head>
    <title>Linux-Support.com Redirect</title>
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;
url=http://www.linux-support.com/cms/" />
</head>
<body>
  You will be redirected to the
  <a href="http://www.linux-support.com/cms/"> Start Page</a>
  of http://www.linux-support.com!
</body>
</html>
 

 

…with Authentication

The following script is a more general one. If credentials have been defined, they will be utilized to connect the proxy server. If no username can be found, the communication will work without authentication.

 

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
 
# fetch setting from environment variable
# set to: http://user:password@proxy_host:proxy_port
http_proxy = ENV["http_proxy"]
proxy = URI.parse(http_proxy)
proxy_user, proxy_pass = proxy.userinfo.split(/:/) if proxy.userinfo
 
# print some details regarding the proxy configuration
puts proxy_user
puts proxy_pass
puts proxy.userinfo
puts proxy.host
puts proxy.port
 
url = URI.parse('http://www.linux-support.com')
 
res = Net::HTTP::Proxy(proxy.host, proxy.port).start(
        url.host, url.port, proxy_user, proxy_pass) { |http|
    http.get('/')
}
puts res.body
 

 

Additional resources:

 

 

You are sitting behind a proxy server and you want your Ruby script to
access Internet resources by utilizing HTTP/HTTPs?

Now problem. This recipe shows you how to cope with this situation.

Overview

Private networks often require internal applications explicitly to utilize
Proxy servers.
Ruby provides a build-in support for standard proxy servers with an without
user authentication.

If you are reqired to support propritary proxy protocols like NTLM, there
are solutions
available, too. But this article cares about standard proxy-servers, only.


Proxy Servers without Auth

The following script is reading the proxy settings from the process
environment.
Applications on Linux systems generally support the utilizaction of
proxy-servers by
analysing the environment variable 'http_proxy'. It contains the proxy
configuration
in the following form: http://proxy_host[:proxy_port].

---
require 'net/http'
require 'uri'

# fetch setting from environment variable
# set to: http://proxy_host:proxy_port
http_proxy = ENV["http_proxy"]
proxy = URI.parse(http_proxy)

url = URI.parse('http://www.linux-support.com')

res = Net::HTTP::Proxy(proxy.host, proxy.port).start(url.host, url.port)
{


1
<span class="moz-txt-tag">|</span>http<span class="moz-txt-tag">|</span>


http.get('/')
}
puts res.body
---

By executing the previous script you will receive the following result:
---
$ ruby http-proxy-simple.rb
<html>
<head>
    <title>Linux-Support.com Redirect</title>
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;
url=http://www.linux-support.com/cms/" />
</head>
<body>
  You will be redirected to the
  <a href="http://www.linux-support.com/cms/"> Start Page</a>
  of http://www.linux-support.com!
</body>
</html>
---


Proxy Servers with Auth

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