From: Gary Thomas <gthomas@...>
Date: 2007-04-29T15:23:25+09:00
Subject: Strange error with HTTPS request

I am interested in downloading, from the New Zealand TAB (Totalisator Agency
Board) website, the names of the race meetings on a particular date. This is
normally reached from the TAB main page (www.tab.co.nz) through their
results page which has a form with date dropdown (and uses HTTPS). Picking
(for example) 20 April 2007 leads to a web page with the URL
ebet.tab.co.nz/ebet/ResultsArchive?day=20&month=04&year=2007

If I copy this URL and paste it into another instance of my web browser
(Mozilla), it produces the correct list of meetings. On the other hand, if I
try and access it through Ruby, I get a zero length response body (and an
obscure error if I switch on the debug as in the example below). My code is:

uri =
URI.parse('https://ebet.tab.co.nz/ebet/ResultsArchive?day=20&month=04&year=2
007')
request = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
request.set_debug_output $stderr
request.use_ssl = true
request.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE
response = request.get2(uri.path)
puts response.body.size

If I pass the parameters as a second parameter, hashed, to the get2 call I
get exactly the same results (that is, an error).

Can someone point out my mistake in this code which works pretty well in
other situations?

Gary Thomas