From: Mark Hubbart <discordantus@...>
Date: 2005-06-04T15:25:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Help, how to download a binary file through Net::HTTP

On 6/3/05, Eric Luo <eric.wenbl@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>  I'm new to Ruby. I want to download a binary file by Net::HTTP or other
> ways. I mimic the
> what's been done in the "Programming Ruby". But It failed. I want to know
> what the
> right way is!

The quick way, if you just want the file contents:

  require 'net/http'
  data = Net::HTTP.get(URI.parse('http://www.google.com/index.html'))

... data now has the contents of the file. Then there's the slightly
more involved way, which lets you reuse the http connection (if you
want to fetch more than one file), and get the headers, too:

  google = Net::HTTP.new('www.google.com', 80)
  headers, data = google.get 'index.html'

Net::HTTP#get (not Net::HTTP.get) returns an array, the first part is
the header info, the second is the file data.

hth,
Mark