Quicker and Easier headers with HTTParty
You may remember last month I showed how to retrieve just the headers in an HTTP request using the HTTParty ruby gem.At that time, there were a couple of extra options that needed to specified in the case of redirects, otherwise on each subsequent redirect, the HEAD request would be converted to a normal GET request. This wasn’t ideal because the reason I was doing HEAD requests in the first place was to save the time it would take to retrieve the entire page and instead just find out whether the request was successful. It also didn’t make much common sense.
So I changed the gem. It now follows redirects and maintains the HEAD request across all redirects.
This is one of the reasons I really enjoy working in code. There’s this great tool that works extremely well in most cases, but there’s something slightly off about one small part of it. Rather than making a support request to some big conglomeration that may or may not read it and may or may not fix the issue, I can just jump in, make the change, and hopefully help improve the functionality for myself and, in the process, for countless others.