net-http
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Ensure consistent Connection header value
Depending on how you start a connection, the Connection
header may be unexpectedly set to close
Creating a new instance of Net::HTTP
and then calling its request
method (or any of its methods that call request
, eg: get
) will first set the Connection
header to close
(if it's not already set), then start the connection, and re-call itself
Where as initiating a request with class methods, or by manually starting a connection before calling request
will not set the Connection
header
As the default connection in HTTP 1.1 is keep-alive
, having the Connection
header silently set to close
is unexpected
Examples:
uri = URI('https://example.com/test')
http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
http.use_ssl = true
req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.path)
req['connection'] # => nil
res = http.request(req)
req['connection'] # => 'close'
http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
http.use_ssl = true
http.start
req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.path)
req['connection'] # => nil
res = http.request(req)
req['connection'] # => nil
From what I can see this functionality was added 24 years ago when implicit starts to GET and HEAD requests were introduced. Not long later the shortcut class methods (eg: Net::HTTP.get
) were added, which called start
as part of the method body, bypassing the implicit start therefore not setting the Connection: close
header, creating inconsistent behaviour
This PR stops the Connection
header from being set to close
when calling request
without an open connection, as that matches the behaviour of the more commonly used class methods, as well as allowing the HTTP 1.1 default of keep-alive
to be used unless the Connection
header is explicitly set