Cannot accept post in Sinatra using Curl - ruby

Question

Just been tinkering with Sinatra and trying to get a bit of a restful web service going.
The error I'm getting at the moment is very specific though.
Take this example post method
post '/postMan/:someParam' do
#Edited here. This code can be anything. 411 is still the response
puts params[:someParam]
end
Seems simple enough. Take a param, make an object out of it, then go store it in whatever way the objects save method defines.
Heres what I use to post the data using Curl
$curl -I -X POST http://127.0.0.1/postman/123456
The only problem is, I'm getting 411 back and have no idea why.
To the best of my knowledge, 411 is length required. Here is the trace
HTTP/1.1 411 Length Required
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Server: WEBrick/1.3.1 (Ruby/1.9.2/2011-07-09)
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:27:09 GMT
Content-Length: 303
Connection: close
I 'Cannot' change the curl message in any way. So might anyone have a way to set the content length to be ignored in sinatra? Or some fix which doesn't involve changing the curl request?
For the record, it doesn't matter whether I use the parameters in the Post method or not. I could have some crazy code inside it, it will still throw the same error

Answer 1

As others said above, WEBrick wrongly requires POST requests to have a Content-Length header. I just pass an empty body, because it's less typing than passing in the header:
curl -X POST -d '' http://webrickwhyyounotakeemptyposts.com/

Answer 2

Are you sure you're on port 80 for your app?
When I run:
ruby -r sinatra -e "post('/postMan/:someParam'){puts params[:someParam]}"
and curl it:
curl -I -X POST http://127.0.0.1:4567/postMan/123456
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Frame-Options: sameorigin
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Server: thin 1.3.1 codename Triple Espresso
it's ok. Had to change the URL to postManthough, your example threw a 404because you had postman.
The output was also as expected:
== Sinatra/1.3.2 has taken the stage on 4567 for development with backup from Thin
>> Thin web server (v1.3.1 codename Triple Espresso)
>> Maximum connections set to 1024
>> Listening on 0.0.0.0:4567, CTRL+C to stop
123456

Answer 3

Ah. Try it without -I. It's probably sending a HEAD request and as such, not sending what you expect. Use -v if you want to show the headers.
curl -v -X POST http://127.0.0.1/postman/123456
curl -v -X POST -d "key=val" http://127.0.0.1/postman/123456

Answer 4

WEBrick erroneously requires POST requests to include the Content-Length header.
curl -H 'Content-Length: 0' -X POST http://example.com
Standardly, however, POST requests don't require a body and therefore don't require the Content-Length header.