Ruby base_auth with net/http - undefined method `user' for String - ruby

Question

I've got pure Ruby app where I want to create request to external API. To do so I'm using standard Ruby Net::HTTP like below:
require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
class Api
BASE_URI = 'https://staging.test.com'
WORKFLOW = 'tests'
QUIZ_PATH = "/v3/accounts/workflows/#{WORKFLOW}/conversations"
def initialize(payload:)
#payload = payload
end
def post_quiz
handle_response(Net::HTTP.post_form("#{BASE_URI}#{QUIZ_PATH}", options))
end
attr_reader :payload
private
def options
{
basic_auth: basic_auth,
body: payload.to_json,
headers: headers
}
end
def basic_auth
{
username: Settings.ln_username,
password: Settings.ln_password
}
end
def headers
{
'User-Agent' => 'Mozilla/5.0',
'Accept-Language' => 'en-US,en;q=0.5',
'Content-Type' => 'application/json'
}
end
def handle_response(response)
return response.body if response.success?
end
end
But instead of response I'm getting an error:
NoMethodError: undefined method `user' for #String:0x00007f80eef9e6f8
Did you mean? super
/Users/usr/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.7.0/lib/ruby/2.7.0/net/http.rb:527:in `post_form'
I don't have any user there, what is it?

Answer 1

Net::HTTP.post_form is used to send FormData pairs - its not what you want to send JSON and it doesn't even allow you to send headers (You're actually putting them in the request body!).
If you want to send a POST request with HTTP Basic auth and custom headers and JSON body you need to create the request object manually:
require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
class Api
BASE_URI = 'https://staging.test.com'
WORKFLOW = 'tests'
QUIZ_PATH = "/v3/accounts/workflows/#{WORKFLOW}/conversations"
attr_reader :payload
def initialize(payload:)
#payload = payload
end
def post_quiz
url = URI.join(BASE_URI, QUIZ_PATH)
request = Net::HTTP::Post.new(url, headers)
request.basic_auth = Settings.ln_username, Settings.ln_password
request.body = #payload.to_json
# open a connection to the server
response = Net::HTTP.start(url.hostname, url.port, use_ssl: true) do |http|
http.request(request)
end
handle_response(response)
end
private
def headers
{
'User-Agent' => 'Mozilla/5.0',
'Accept-Language' => 'en-US,en;q=0.5',
'Content-Type' => 'application/json'
}
end
# How to respond from an API client is a whole topic in itself but a tuple or hash might
# be a better choice as it lets consumers decide what to do with the response and handle stuff like logging
# errors
def handle_response(response)
# Net::HTTP doesn't have a success? method - you're confusing it with HTTParty
case response
when Net::HTTPSuccess, Net::HTTPCreated
response.body
else
false
end
end
end

Answer 2

Here is the source code that raises the error:
def HTTP.post_form(url, params)
req = Post.new(url)
req.form_data = params
>> req.basic_auth url.user, url.password if url.user
start(url.hostname, url.port,
:use_ssl => url.scheme == 'https' ) {|http|
http.request(req)
}
end
From the docs:
post_form(url, params)
Posts HTML form data to the specified URI object. The form data must be provided as a Hash mapping from String to String.
That means Net::HTTP.post_form(URI("#{BASE_URI}#{QUIZ_PATH}"), options) fixes it. You are currently sending a string as url instead of a URI.