Mudbug

Mudbug is a JSON-oriented, thin wrapper around rest-client's RestClient::Resource

An executable mb is provided, which compares favorably to curl or wget in applicable situations.

Features

• GET, POST, PUT, or DELETE JSON payloads
• Convenience
• Do The Right Thing 80% of the time every time
• Easy Accept: headers
• Understand and fall back to basic Content-types if application/json is not provided
• Fine-grained response handling using Mudbug#resource

Installation

Install the gem:

$ gem install mudbug

Or, if using Bundler, add to your Gemfile:

gem 'mudbug', '~> 0.8'

Quick Start

Initialize it with a host:

require 'mudbug'
mb = Mudbug.new 'ip.jsontest.com'

The convenience methods #get, #post, #put, or #delete return the response body. If the response has a Content-type: application/json header, then JSON parsing will be automatically performed on the response body, with the resulting object returned.

response = mb.get '/'
# => {"ip"=>"12.34.56.78"}

response.class
# => Hash

Usage

You can pass through persistent options to rest-client:

require 'mudbug'
mb = Mudbug.new 'google.com', max_redirects: 3

Declare what you accept: (optional, default shown)

mb.accept :json, :html, :text

You can pass through per-request query params:

mb.get '/', foo: bar
# i.e. GET /?foo=bar

RestClient exceptions will be passed through. POST and PUT payloads will be sent as strings. Non-string payloads will be converted to JSON by calling #to_json.

mb = Mudbug.new 'plus.google.com'
mb.post '/', { 'hi' => 'mom' }

# /path/to/lib/restclient/abstract_response.rb:48:in `return!': 405 Method Not Allowed (RestClient::MethodNotAllowed)

# lawyer up
# hit gym
Mudbug.new('facebook.com').delete '/'

# /path/to/lib/restclient/abstract_response.rb:39:in `return!': 301 Moved Permanently (RestClient::MovedPermanently)

Command Line

An executable mb is provided. It wants arguments HOST, METHOD, PATH, PAYLOAD. A persistent configuration system is provided via dotcfg, such that you can provide default values for some arguments and only specify the remaining arguments on the command line.

Digging Deeper

Call Mudbug#resource directly for finer-grained response handling:

resp = Mudbug.new('google.com').resource('/').get
# check resp.code
# check resp.headers
# process resp.body
# etc.

Here is the heart of Mudbug's response processing:

# this structure declares what we support in the request Accept: header
# and defines automatic processing of the response based on the
# response Content-type: header
#
CONTENT = {
  json: {
    type: 'application/json',
    proc: proc { |text| JSON.parse(text, symobolize_names: true) },
  },
  html: {
    type: 'text/html',
    proc: proc { |text| text },
  },
  text: {
    type: 'text/plain',
    proc: proc { |text| text },
  },
}

Careful with that axe, Eugene.

Examples

• accepts_and_methods (sample output)

Funny, that

Mudbug works best with webservers that respect the Accept: request header and provide proper Content-type: response headers.

RFC 2616

If no Accept header field is present, then it is assumed that the client accepts all media types. If an Accept header field is present, and if the server cannot send a response which is acceptable according to the combined Accept field value, then the server SHOULD send a 406 (not acceptable) response.