curl request to HTTParty request

Question

I have very little experience with APIs can someone please help me translate this:

$ curl -X POST -d "[email protected]&api_key=231421423423423423423" \
  https://devapi.testapi.com/v2/authenticate/api

to something like this?:

include HTTParty
base_uri 'https://devapi.testapi.com'

def login
  response = self.class.post( "/v2/authenticate/api",
               :headers => { "login_id" => '[email protected]', "api_key" => '231421423423423423423' }
             ).parsed_response

  @token = response["auth_token"]
  return @token
end

I'm not sure where to put login_id and api_key so that they would appear at the beginning of the request address instead of the end.

Answer 1

First, we need to clear up some confusion. When you send a POST request, like you did with Curl, it looks like this:

POST /v2/authenticate/api HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: curl/7.30.0
Host: localhost:8000
Accept: */*
Content-Length: 56
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

[email protected]&api_key=231421423423423423423

The first line is the request method (POST) and resource (/v2/authenticate/api) and the protocol version (HTTP/1.1). The next five lines are the headers, which always have a key (e.g. Content-Length), followed by a colon and space (:), followed by a value (56).

You'll notice that none of these headers have your data, i.e. login_id or api_key. Data doesn't go in the headers. It goes in the body, which is after the headers and an intervening blank line that tells the server, "the headers are done; everything else I send is the body."

Hopefully that will help clear up the confusion that I see here:

I'm not sure where to put login_id and api_key so that they would appear at the beginning of the request address instead of the end.

In a POST request the data is not part of the address, nor is it, to reiterate, part of the headers. It's the body.

When making a POST request with HTTParty, you could use the :body option to specify a string to use as the POST body, but in your Ruby code it looks like you'd rather use a Hash, which is the right way to go. With a Hash, you use the :query option instead of :body, and HTTParty will automatically encode the Hash's contents correctly. Using that, your code would look like this:

query_hash = { :login_id => '[email protected]',
               :api_key  => '231421423423423423423' }

response = self.class.post("/v2/authenticate/api", :query => query_hash)