Ruby: How to post a file via HTTP as multipart/form-data?

Question

I like RestClient. It encapsulates net/http with cool features like multipart form data:

require 'rest_client'
RestClient.post('http://localhost:3000/foo', 
  :name_of_file_param => File.new('/path/to/file'))

It also supports streaming.

gem install rest-client will get you started.

I can't say enough good things about Nick Sieger's multipart-post library.

It adds support for multipart posting directly to Net::HTTP, removing your need to manually worry about boundaries or big libraries that may have different goals than your own.

Here is a little example on how to use it from the README:

require 'net/http/post/multipart'

url = URI.parse('http://www.example.com/upload')
File.open("./image.jpg") do |jpg|
  req = Net::HTTP::Post::Multipart.new url.path,
    "file" => UploadIO.new(jpg, "image/jpeg", "image.jpg")
  res = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port) do |http|
    http.request(req)
  end
end

You can check out the library here: http://github.com/nicksieger/multipart-post

or install it with:

$ sudo gem install multipart-post

If you're connecting via SSL you need to start the connection like this:

n = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port) 
n.use_ssl = true
# for debugging dev server
#n.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE
res = n.start do |http|

Another one using only standard libraries:

uri = URI('https://some.end.point/some/path')
request = Net::HTTP::Post.new(uri)
request['Authorization'] = 'If you need some headers'
form_data = [['photos', photo.tempfile]] # or File.open() in case of local file

request.set_form form_data, 'multipart/form-data'
response = Net::HTTP.start(uri.hostname, uri.port, use_ssl: true) do |http| # pay attention to use_ssl if you need it
  http.request(request)
end

Tried a lot of approaches but only this was worked for me.

curb looks like a great solution, but in case it doesn't meet your needs, you can do it with Net::HTTP. A multipart form post is just a carefully-formatted string with some extra headers. It seems like every Ruby programmer who needs to do multipart posts ends up writing their own little library for it, which makes me wonder why this functionality isn't built-in. Maybe it is... Anyway, for your reading pleasure, I'll go ahead and give my solution here. This code is based off of examples I found on a couple of blogs, but I regret that I can't find the links anymore. So I guess I just have to take all the credit for myself...

The module I wrote for this contains one public class, for generating the form data and headers out of a hash of String and File objects. So for example, if you wanted to post a form with a string parameter named "title" and a file parameter named "document", you would do the following:

#prepare the query
data, headers = Multipart::Post.prepare_query("title" => my_string, "document" => my_file)

Then you just do a normal POST with Net::HTTP:

http = Net::HTTP.new(upload_uri.host, upload_uri.port)
res = http.start {|con| con.post(upload_uri.path, data, headers) }

Or however else you want to do the POST. The point is that Multipart returns the data and headers that you need to send. And that's it! Simple, right? Here's the code for the Multipart module (you need the mime-types gem):

# Takes a hash of string and file parameters and returns a string of text
# formatted to be sent as a multipart form post.
#
# Author:: Cody Brimhall <mailto:[email protected]>
# Created:: 22 Feb 2008
# License:: Distributed under the terms of the WTFPL (http://www.wtfpl.net/txt/copying/)

require 'rubygems'
require 'mime/types'
require 'cgi'


module Multipart
  VERSION = "1.0.0"

  # Formats a given hash as a multipart form post
  # If a hash value responds to :string or :read messages, then it is
  # interpreted as a file and processed accordingly; otherwise, it is assumed
  # to be a string
  class Post
    # We have to pretend we're a web browser...
    USERAGENT = "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/523.10.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Safari/523.10.6"
    BOUNDARY = "0123456789ABLEWASIEREISAWELBA9876543210"
    CONTENT_TYPE = "multipart/form-data; boundary=#{ BOUNDARY }"
    HEADER = { "Content-Type" => CONTENT_TYPE, "User-Agent" => USERAGENT }

    def self.prepare_query(params)
      fp = []

      params.each do |k, v|
        # Are we trying to make a file parameter?
        if v.respond_to?(:path) and v.respond_to?(:read) then
          fp.push(FileParam.new(k, v.path, v.read))
        # We must be trying to make a regular parameter
        else
          fp.push(StringParam.new(k, v))
        end
      end

      # Assemble the request body using the special multipart format
      query = fp.collect {|p| "--" + BOUNDARY + "\r\n" + p.to_multipart }.join("") + "--" + BOUNDARY + "--"
      return query, HEADER
    end
  end

  private

  # Formats a basic string key/value pair for inclusion with a multipart post
  class StringParam
    attr_accessor :k, :v

    def initialize(k, v)
      @k = k
      @v = v
    end

    def to_multipart
      return "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"#{CGI::escape(k)}\"\r\n\r\n#{v}\r\n"
    end
  end

  # Formats the contents of a file or string for inclusion with a multipart
  # form post
  class FileParam
    attr_accessor :k, :filename, :content

    def initialize(k, filename, content)
      @k = k
      @filename = filename
      @content = content
    end

    def to_multipart
      # If we can tell the possible mime-type from the filename, use the
      # first in the list; otherwise, use "application/octet-stream"
      mime_type = MIME::Types.type_for(filename)[0] || MIME::Types["application/octet-stream"][0]
      return "Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"#{CGI::escape(k)}\"; filename=\"#{ filename }\"\r\n" +
             "Content-Type: #{ mime_type.simplified }\r\n\r\n#{ content }\r\n"
    end
  end
end

Here is my solution after trying other ones available on this post, I'm using it to upload photo on TwitPic:

  def upload(photo)
    `curl -F media=@#{photo.path} -F username=#{@username} -F password=#{@password} -F message='#{photo.title}' http://twitpic.com/api/uploadAndPost`
  end

Fast forward to 2017, ruby stdlib net/http has this built-in since 1.9.3

Net::HTTPRequest#set_form): Added to support both application/x-www-form-urlencoded and multipart/form-data.

https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.3.1/libdoc/net/http/rdoc/Net/HTTPHeader.html#method-i-set_form

We can even use IO which does not support :size to stream the form data.

Hoping that this answer can really help someone :)

P.S. I only tested this in ruby 2.3.1

Ok, here's a simple example using curb.

require 'yaml'
require 'curb'

# prepare post data
post_data = fields_hash.map { |k, v| Curl::PostField.content(k, v.to_s) }
post_data << Curl::PostField.file('file', '/path/to/file'), 

# post
c = Curl::Easy.new('http://localhost:3000/foo')
c.multipart_form_post = true
c.http_post(post_data)

# print response
y [c.response_code, c.body_str]