A minimal, lightweight HTTP client library for Ruby that provides a clean interface for making HTTP requests with automatic JSON handling, SSL support, and customizable timeouts.

• Simple API for GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE requests
• Automatic JSON parsing and serialization
• SSL/HTTPS support with proper certificate verification
• Configurable timeouts
• Response helper methods for status checking
• No external dependencies beyond Ruby standard library

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'mini_http'

And then execute:

bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

gem install mini_http

response = MiniHttp.get("https://api.example.com/users")

if response.success?
  users = response.json
  puts users
else
  puts "Error: #{response.code}"
end

response = MiniHttp.post(
  "https://api.example.com/users",
  body: { name: "John", email: "[email protected]" },
  headers: { "Authorization" => "Bearer token123" }
)

if response.success?
  puts "User created: #{response.json}"
end

response = MiniHttp.put(
  "https://api.example.com/users/1",
  body: { name: "John Updated" },
  timeout: 60
)

response = MiniHttp.delete(
  "https://api.example.com/users/1",
  headers: { "Authorization" => "Bearer token123" }
)

response = MiniHttp.get("https://api.example.com/data")

# Status checking
response.success?       # true for 2xx status codes
response.client_error?  # true for 4xx status codes
response.server_error?  # true for 5xx status codes

# Response data
response.code           # HTTP status code (integer)
response.body           # Raw response body (string)
response.headers        # Response headers (hash)
response.json           # Parsed JSON (hash/array, nil if not valid JSON)

All methods support these optional parameters:

• headers: Hash of HTTP headers
• timeout: Request timeout in seconds (default: 30)
• body: Request body for POST/PUT (string or object that responds to to_json)
• ssl: Enable/disable SSL certificate verification (default: true)

response = MiniHttp.get(
  "https://api.example.com/data",
  headers: {
    "User-Agent" => "MyApp/1.0",
    "Accept" => "application/json"
  },
  timeout: 45
)

⚠️ Warning: Only use this in development environments. Never disable SSL verification in production.

# Useful for testing with self-signed certificates in development
response = MiniHttp.get(
  "https://localhost:3000/api/data",
  ssl: false
)

# Works with all HTTP methods
response = MiniHttp.post(
  "https://dev-api.local/users",
  body: { name: "Test User" },
  ssl: false
)

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/felipecicolin/simple_http. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.