How to send requests through a proxy in Ruby (Net::HTTP)

What you need

The proxy is issued in the format host:port:login:password. Replace HOST, PORT, LOGIN and PASSWORD with your own values. The net/http library ships with standard Ruby; nothing needs to be installed.

Example

require "net/http"
require "uri"

uri = URI("https://api.ipify.org")

# The last four arguments: the proxy's address, port, login and password.
# The login and password are passed separately, no need to encode them
http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port, "HOST", "PORT", "LOGIN", "PASSWORD")

# HTTPS site: we enable encryption for the site itself, while the proxy works over HTTP
http.use_ssl = true
http.open_timeout = 15
http.read_timeout = 30

response = http.get(uri.request_uri)

# The service returns the address the request came from
puts response.body

If SOCKS5

Net::HTTP works only with HTTP proxies; SOCKS is not mentioned in its documentation. Use the proxy's HTTP port.

Common errors

1. Response 407 Proxy Authentication Required: the login or password is wrong. Check the order in the issued host:port:login:password.
2. Net::OpenTimeout or Net::ReadTimeout: check HOST and PORT, whether the SOCKS5 port was put into HTTP mode, and increase the timeouts.
3. Special characters in the password: when the login and password are passed as separate arguments, nothing needs encoding. If you build the proxy address as a string, encode the values with URI.encode_www_form_component.
4. The https:// scheme for the proxy: the issued proxy works over HTTP, so the proxy is given simply as an address and port; use_ssl refers to the site, not the proxy.
5. If p_addr is not specified, Net::HTTP takes the proxy from the http_proxy environment variable. Set the proxy address explicitly, as in the example.