Reading arbitrary number of bytes? (Whois client) about net_tcp_client

[reidmorrison]

Good point, does not look like the API takes into consideration the use case where we just want call socket.read and just read everything until the socket is closed.
Can you check if using a regular socket works in the above scenario when calling socket.read?
If so, I will update the gem to support a read with no parameters.

[njh]

Yes, you can call IO#read without any parameters:

If length is omitted or is nil, it reads until EOF and the encoding conversion is applied, if applicable. A string is returned even if EOF is encountered before any data is read.

Here is an example minimal Whois client:

TCPSocket.open("whois.nic.me", 43) do |sock|
  sock.write("DOMAIN njh.me\r\n")
  response = sock.read
  puts "Received: #{response}"
end

It would also be really useful to be able to read line by line (IO#gets / IO#each_line / IO#readlines).

Here is an example minimal HTTP client:

TCPSocket.open("www.bbc.co.uk", 80) do |sock|
  sock.write("GET / HTTP/1.0\nHost: www.bbc.co.uk\n\r\n")
  sock.each_line do |line|
    line.chomp!
    break if line.empty?
    puts "Header: #{line}"
  end
  puts "Body: #{sock.read}"
end

It reads headers line by line, until a blank line and then reads the body until EOF.

[reidmorrison]

Want to submit a pull request adding both capabilities?

[njh]

I have taken a quick look and it doesn't look straightforward. While the length parameter for IO#read is optional, the length parameter for IO#read_nonblock is not. I am not sure I understand what you are doing in your code well enough to work out how to add support for this.

I was having trouble with IPv6 being down for some public whois server - so I was looking at Net::TCPClient for use in the whois ruby gem. Hower the author is not keen on adding an external dependency. The problem is probably solved just by iterating over the addresses using Resolv.each_address.