OpenSSL error when making http request in Ruby - ruby

Question

I have a service that makes an http request and it looks like this:
require 'net/http'
class SenderNameService
def get_names(id)
domain = "http://www.somedomain.com"
path = "/api/orchards/users/#{id}"
url = URI.parse(domain + path)
req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url.to_s)
token = generate_token
req.add_field("Authorization", token)
http = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port)
http.use_ssl = true
res = http.start do |http|
http.request(req)
end
if res.code == '200'
return JSON.parse(res.body)
else
raise StandardError, "Request for sender names failed"
end
end
private
def generate_token
#Some JWT token generating logic goes here.
end
end
When I make a request, I get this error:
OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError: SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 state=SSLv2/v3 read server hello A: unknown protocol
from .rbenv/versions/2.3.3/lib/ruby/2.3.0/net/http.rb:933:in `connect_nonblock'
What is going on? What does that error mean?
UPDATE: The error gets fixed when I change http to https. What is going on?

Answer 1

http.use_ssl = true
UPDATE: The error gets fixed when I change http to https. What is going on?
A http URL by default uses port 80 and there is usually a server which speaks HTTP only. A https URL instead uses port 443 where a server speaking HTTPS resides. But, you are trying to enforce HTTPS (i.e. TLS+HTTP) on the http port where no TLS capable server listens. This means that your client starts a TLS handshake to this server but does not get a TLS response back but instead a HTTP response. Trying to interpret the response as TLS causes the error you see, i.e. unknown protocol.

Answer 2

That version of Ruby uses connect_nonblock in http.rb to make the connections, which requests a connection to a given socket. The socket must have an address and a port so probably it is failing because it is trying to connect to an https address though port 443 (http.use_ssl=true), so you should rather use https instead of http (requires implementation of server side SSL) or set http.use_ssl to false. Please refer to: http://apidock.com/ruby/Socket/connect_nonblock