Depending on how you start a connection, the Connection header may be unexpectedly set to close
Creating a new instance of Net::HTTP and then calling its request method (or any of its methods that call request, eg: get) will first set the Connection header to close (if it's not already set), then start the connection, and re-call itself
Where as initiating a request with class methods, or by manually starting a connection before calling request will not set the Connection header
As the default connection in HTTP 1.1 is keep-alive, having the Connection header silently set to close is unexpected
From what I can see this functionality was added 24 years ago when implicit starts to GET and HEAD requests were introduced. Not long later the shortcut class methods (eg: Net::HTTP.get) were added, which called start as part of the method body, bypassing the implicit start therefore not setting the Connection: close header, creating inconsistent behaviour
This PR stops the Connection header from being set to close when calling request without an open connection, as that matches the behaviour of the more commonly used class methods, as well as allowing the HTTP 1.1 default of keep-alive to be used unless the Connection header is explicitly set
Depending on how you start a connection, the
Connection
header may be unexpectedly set toclose
Creating a new instance of
Net::HTTP
and then calling itsrequest
method (or any of its methods that callrequest
, eg:get
) will first set theConnection
header toclose
(if it's not already set), then start the connection, and re-call itselfWhere as initiating a request with class methods, or by manually starting a connection before calling
request
will not set theConnection
headerAs the default connection in HTTP 1.1 is
keep-alive
, having theConnection
header silently set toclose
is unexpectedExamples:
From what I can see this functionality was added 24 years ago when implicit starts to GET and HEAD requests were introduced. Not long later the shortcut class methods (eg:
Net::HTTP.get
) were added, which calledstart
as part of the method body, bypassing the implicit start therefore not setting theConnection: close
header, creating inconsistent behaviourThis PR stops the
Connection
header from being set toclose
when callingrequest
without an open connection, as that matches the behaviour of the more commonly used class methods, as well as allowing the HTTP 1.1 default ofkeep-alive
to be used unless theConnection
header is explicitly set