Using Ruby with Charles Proxy via export http_proxy on Mac

Question

I have a simple Ruby script (Ruby 2.0) that I want to run on Mac OSX Yosemite and I want to proxy the network requests via Charles Proxy.

require 'json'
require 'net/http'
require 'net/https'

class Charles

def go

    uri = URI.parse('http://example.com')
    req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri.request_uri)
    http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
    http.use_ssl = false
    res = http.request req

    puts res
    puts res.body

end

end

net = Charles.new
net.go

If I execute this script, all is fine but I don't see the request in Charles.

As soon as I set an http proxy via the command line, the script errors:

export http_proxy=192.168.1.108:8888

/Users/hug/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.0.0-p643/lib/ruby/2.0.0/uri/common.rb:176:in `split': bad URI(is not URI?): 192.168.1.108:8888 (URI::InvalidURIError)

After I

unset http_proxy

it works again. I also tried

export http_proxy=locahost:8888
export http_proxy=machinename.local:8888

All these ways of setting the proxy work fine for curl, but none for Ruby.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The http_proxy environment variable should include the protocol as well. Curl seems to be lazy in that sense.

Try setting the proxy via

export http_proxy="http://localhost:8888"