API to post file

[sferik]

I’m trying to perform a multipart POST with the HTTP gem but I’m having trouble getting the headers and body right. We should include an example of how to do this in the README.

[tarcieri]

Or possibly an API like #post_file

[sferik]

@tarcieri Yes, that would be nice.

FYI, I’ve been working on replacing Faraday with the HTTP gem on a branch in the Twitter gem. I’ve got pretty much everything working except for posting files (this branch also depends on JSON parsing, which I’ve hacked together in a local branch).

[tarcieri]

Nice, someone actually pinged me on Faraday support for the HTTP gem yesterday

[sferik]

That would be nice too.

I haven’t done proper benchmarking but the Twitter test suite (about 900 examples that make about 368 HTTP requests) runs about 4X faster in the http branch than in master (with Faraday). Obviously, the bottleneck of any HTTP API wrapper is network latency but this seems like a pretty significant reduction in request overhead.

I’d be curios to see how the performance would compare using an HTTP gem adapter for Faraday. I suspect it would be slower than using just the HTTP gem (sans Faraday). I think Faraday’s slowness is a result of having a middleware stack that each request must pass through.

I do think writing a Faraday adapter would make it easier for people to try the HTTP gem in their existing clients.

[Asmod4n]

https://github.com/nicksieger/multipart-post actually looks like it can be used anywhere.

[tarcieri]

I don't think this is required for 0.6

[sferik]

I agree, this is more of a nice-to-have for v0.6 but I think it’s a requirement for v1.0.

[sferik]

I’ve moved this issue out of the v0.6 milestone and created a new v1.0 milestone.

[tarcieri]

Seems good

[ixti]

An issue with #post_file is that it will make API call look pretty strange when you need to upload more than one file or when you need to post some form values as well. I propose to stay with the same API we have now, we just need to recognize part of :form:

HTTP.post(url, :form => {
  :title => "Foobar",
  :file => HTTP::UploadIO.new(path_to_file, optional_mime_type)
})

Something very similar to Faraday actually ;))

[sferik]

@ixti That would be acceptable to me. What is needed to support this?

[ixti]

@sferik I guess some spare time ;)) Other than that I don't see any problems here :D

[tarcieri]

@ixti 👍

[sferik]

@Asmod4n multipart-post uses Net::HTTP 😝

@ixti I’ve merged the http branch into master. This issue is the only thing stopping me from releasing the next major version of the twitter gem. Any idea when you might get a chance to work on this?

[ixti]

@sferik will try to jimp on this during this weekend.

[sferik]

@ixti \o/

[JuanitoFatas]

@ixti 👍

[Asmod4n]

@sferik what i was trying to say was multipart-post looks like it doesn't depent on anything and can be injected into any IO library, namely https://github.com/nicksieger/multipart-post/blob/master/lib/parts.rb seams to be independent of Net::HTTP and can be hooked into this gem :)

[sferik]

@Asmod4n Ah, very nice. :)

[ixti]

I have started working on this issue, but not yet finished :D Will finish during this week.
We will not use multipart-post. Although it's really might be possible to couple it with HTTP gem, I dislike it's code and would like to come with our own solution.

[sferik]

@ixti Awesome! If this code is independent of the http gem, do you think it makes sense to package it as a separate gem (suggested name: http-multipart)? This would force us to have a clean separation and allow people to use it with other Ruby HTTP libraries.

[ixti]

@sferik Makes sense. Although I would like to first build it as part of HTTP gem - and then simply extract those classes out :D

Re suggested name. Actually a more appropriate name will be http-form or probably http-form_data. A sneak peek to the API:

# Usage inside with HTTP Gem:

HTTP.post(some_url, :form => {
  :username => "ixti",
  :avatar => HTTP::FormData::File.new("/path/to/file.jpg"),
  :cv => HTTP::FormData::File.new(io, :filename => "cv.pdf")
})

# Standalone usage:

form = HTTP::FormData.new({
  :username => "ixti",
  :avatar => HTTP::FormData::File.new("/path/to/file.jpg"),
  :cv => HTTP::FormData::File.new(io, :filename => "cv.pdf")
})

form.to_s # => returns HTTP request multipart body

[zackxu1]

@ixti The above is really helpful. It would be even more helpful if it's in the README of the gem. Thank you.

[tarcieri]

@zackxu1 it's documented here: https://github.com/httprb/http/wiki/Passing-Parameters