File: README

Curb - Libcurl bindings for Ruby

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 curl.haxx.se/ .

Curb is a work-in-progress, and currently only supports libcurl‘s ‘easy’ mode.

License

You will need

A working Ruby installation (1.8+, tested with 1.8.5)
A working (lib)curl installation, with development stuff (7.5+, tested with 7.15)
A sane build environment

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'

Currently, Curb is tested only on GNU/Linux x86 - YMMV on other platforms. If you do use another platform and experience problems, or if you can expand on the above instructions, please get in touch via the mailing list on Curb‘s Rubyforge page.

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

  $ rake doc

Examples

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

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('myfile.rb'))