Net::HTTP vs REST Client gem: How do they handle bad websites / 404

I was trying to access some websites using rest-client gem and I found a behavior that was puzzling to me. It has to do with using rest-client with a bad website, in this case, www.google.com/this_does_not_exist.

What I expected: That the code would run and the response object will have a 404 response code.

What actually happened: There was an exception and the code was terminated prematurely.

When I tried the same thing with the Net::HTTP library, I did get the expected result.

The question is: Is this behavior expected in rest-client? If so, how would you get back an object with a 404 response code when using with bad websites.

Here is the code from my irb:

2.2.1 :045 > uri = URI('http://www.google.com')
 => #<URI::HTTP http://www.google.com> 
2.2.1 :046 > response = Net::HTTP.get_response(uri)
 => #<Net::HTTPOK 200 OK readbody=true> 
2.2.1 :047 > response.code
 => "200" 
2.2.1 :048 > uri = URI('http://www.google.com/this_does_not_exist')
 => #<URI::HTTP http://www.google.com/this_does_not_exist> 
2.2.1 :049 > response = Net::HTTP.get_response(uri)
 => #<Net::HTTPNotFound 404 Not Found readbody=true> 
2.2.1 :050 > response.code
 => "404" 
2.2.1 :051 > uri = URI('http://www.google.com')
 => #<URI::HTTP http://www.google.com> 
2.2.1 :052 > response = RestClient.get('http://www.google.com')
 => <RestClient::Response 200 "<!doctype h..."> 
2.2.1 :053 > response.code
 => 200 
2.2.1 :054 > response = RestClient.get('http://www.google.com/this_does_not_exist')
RestClient::NotFound: 404 Not Found
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1/gems/rest-client-2.0.0/lib/restclient/abstract_response.rb:223:in `exception_with_response'
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1/gems/rest-client-2.0.0/lib/restclient/abstract_response.rb:103:in `return!'
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1/gems/rest-client-2.0.0/lib/restclient/request.rb:860:in `process_result'
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1/gems/rest-client-2.0.0/lib/restclient/request.rb:776:in `block in transmit'
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.2.1/lib/ruby/2.2.0/net/http.rb:853:in `start'
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1/gems/rest-client-2.0.0/lib/restclient/request.rb:766:in `transmit'
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1/gems/rest-client-2.0.0/lib/restclient/request.rb:215:in `execute'
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1/gems/rest-client-2.0.0/lib/restclient/request.rb:52:in `execute'
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1/gems/rest-client-2.0.0/lib/restclient.rb:67:in `get'
    from (irb):54
    from /Users/piperwarrior/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.2.1/bin/irb:11:in `<main>'
2.2.1 :055 >

Solution

From the GitHub README:

for result codes between 200 and 207, a RestClient::Response will be returned

for result codes 301, 302 or 307, the redirection will be followed if the request is a GET or a HEAD

for result code 303, the redirection will be followed and the request transformed into a GET

for other cases, a RestClient::Exception holding the Response will be raised; a specific exception class will be thrown for known error codes

call .response on the exception to get the server's response

So yes, this is expected behavior, the response object can be retrieved with e.response.