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Concurrent HTTP requests in Ruby

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Benchmark

The following benchmarks show only approximate values. These results may vary depending on the circumstances.

$ REPEAT_COUNT=5 URL=http://google.com ruby benchmark.rb

Comparison:
              Parallel in threads: 4.1 i/s
                  Curb in threads: 4.1 i/s - 1.01x slower
                       Curb Multi: 4.1 i/s - 1.01x slower
                   Typhoeus Hydra: 4.0 i/s - 1.03x slower
EM-HTTP-request with EM-Synchrony: 4.0 i/s - 1.03x slower
            EM-HTTP-request Multi: 4.0 i/s - 1.04x slower
             Net::HTTP in threads: 4.0 i/s - 1.04x slower
       Patron with ConnectionPool: 1.4 i/s - 2.86x slower
                Celluloid futures: 0.8 i/s - 4.88x slower
            Net::HTTP in sequence: 0.8 i/s - 5.46x slower

$ REPEAT_COUNT=30 URL=http://baidu.com ruby benchmark.rb

Comparison:
            EM-HTTP-request Multi: 0.9 i/s
                       Curb Multi: 0.8 i/s - 1.12x slower
                  Curb in threads: 0.7 i/s - 1.31x slower
              Parallel in threads: 0.5 i/s - 1.86x slower
EM-HTTP-request with EM-Synchrony: 0.4 i/s - 2.14x slower
                   Typhoeus Hydra: 0.4 i/s - 2.25x slower
             Net::HTTP in threads: 0.2 i/s - 3.71x slower
       Patron with ConnectionPool: 0.1 i/s - 17.39x slower
                Celluloid futures: 0.0 i/s - 24.31x slower
            Net::HTTP in sequence: 0.0 i/s - 29.12x slower

Conclusion

In my opinion, using Parallel is the simplest way to make concurrent HTTP requests in threads. Look at the Clients::ParallelThreads class, it is as simple as just making requests in sequence.

However, if you are making a lot of requests simultaneously, using a lot of threads may be too expensive for you. In this case Curb::Multi will probably be the best solution for you. The code seems not so elegant, but you can always encapsulate it in your own method or class.

Typhoeus is another fast and reliable HTTP client which allows to make concurrent requests by using Typhoeus::Hydra.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend using EM-HTTP-request even if it works really fast. The only situation when it may be useful if you already use EventMachine in your project.

Using Patron is not as fast as other options here. Plus it requires one more additional dependency, e.g. ConnectionPool, because Patron::Session is not thread safe.

Celluloid is a great actor-based library, but making simple HTTP requests in actors adds too much overhead.

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