Ruby HTTPClient: How to use persistent connections?

Question

How does one use persistent HTTP connections with HTTPClient? Is it just a matter of setting Keep Alive when sending a HTTP Request? The documentation states persistent connections are supported, but doesn't tell us how to use them.

Answer 1

It's available in Net::HTTP

As written in the doc,

Net::HTTP.start immediately creates a connection to an HTTP server which is kept open for the duration of the block. The connection will remain open for multiple requests in the block if the server indicates it supports persistent connections.

That means all the request you'll do in the block will use the same HTTP connection.

The example from the doc

require 'net/http'

uri = URI('http://google.com/')

Net::HTTP.start(uri.host, uri.port) do |http|
  request = Net::HTTP::Get.new uri.request_uri

  response = http.request request # Net::HTTPResponse object
end

Answer 2

As stated in the HttpClient Readme:

you don't have to care HTTP/1.1 persistent connection (httpclient cares instead of you)

That usually means that in the scenario that the server supports HTTP 1.1 persistent connections, the httpclient gem will store and re-use them (the connections) for subsequent requests. In which case, you don't have to worry about it.