Ruby’s built-in library: Net/HTTP and gems that powers Net/HTTP:
- Multipart::Post—streamy multipart form post capability
- Net::HTTP::Persistent—Persistent support
REST Client, httparty, and Nestful.
curb, EM-HTTP-Request, Patron, and Typhoeus.
EM-Synchrony, excon, Faraday, httpclient, HTTPX, and net-http2.
HTTP.
There are probably many more I did not know about, what should we choose?
- shrine uses HTTP
- Octokit.rb uses Faraday
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Stripe Ruby API client is
Net/HTTP.
...Don’t worry, it’s very easy to evaluate.
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Easy to use API
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Fast (Keep-Alive, HTTP/2 Connection Coalescing)
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Low memory usage
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Network usage ((de)compression of request/response)
So you send smaller request / receive small response = Less network usages.
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Concurrent support by protocol (HTTP pipeline, HTTP/2 multiplex)
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Less Dependencies
Less dependencies to keep up; Less memory; If you’re building a client of a service, you probably want to have no dependency in order to have as many users as possible. -
Possible to fit all scenarios you need
We want one gem to rule them all.
Let’s rule out gems that do not comes with what we want:
httparty does not have Keep-Alice support (you need persistent_httparty to keep the party alive). REST Client uses too much memory and currently the slowest. EM-* also requires multiple gems. Net/HTTP’s API is not very easy to use.
Now we still have many libraries to choose from. How about we consider some of HTTP/2 features? Now we left with only HTTPX...
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HTTP/2 & concurrent requests
The concurrency are done via HTTP protocol’s features: HTTP/2 multiplex & HTTP Pipeline support without you do any work, same API. It is based on a plugin-in system, you only use what you need, lightweight.
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The documentation is simple
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All HTTP features are well tested by httpbin.
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ALPN support to reduce latency (if you use HTTPS resolver for DNS)
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Alt-Svc support that directs you to the right/closest server
See HTTPX wiki.