Ruby Net::HTTP Proxy Setup

Net::HTTP is Ruby's built-in HTTP client — no gems required. Its `Proxy` class method creates a proxy-aware HTTP class that routes all requests through the specified gateway. For simple proxy needs in Ruby applications, Net::HTTP is the zero-dependency option.

Basic Configuration

require 'net/http'

proxy_host = 'gate.hexproxies.com' proxy_port = 8080 proxy_user = ENV['PROXY_USER'] proxy_pass = ENV['PROXY_PASS']

uri = URI('https://httpbin.org/ip')

# Create proxy-aware HTTP class proxy_class = Net::HTTP::Proxy(proxy_host, proxy_port, proxy_user, proxy_pass)

# Use the proxy class to make requests proxy_class.start(uri.host, uri.port, use_ssl: true) do |http| http.open_timeout = 15 http.read_timeout = 30

request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri) request['User-Agent'] = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7)' request['Accept-Language'] = 'en-US,en;q=0.9'

response = http.request(request) puts "[#{response.code}] #{response.body}" end ```

Reusable Proxy Fetch Method

def fetch_via_proxy(url, max_retries: 3)
  uri = URI(url)
  proxy_class = Net::HTTP::Proxy(
    'gate.hexproxies.com', 8080,
    ENV['PROXY_USER'], ENV['PROXY_PASS']

retries = 0 begin proxy_class.start(uri.host, uri.port, use_ssl: uri.scheme == 'https') do |http| http.open_timeout = 15 http.read_timeout = 30 response = http.request(Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri))

if [403, 429, 503].include?(response.code.to_i) && retries < max_retries retries += 1 sleep(retries * 2) raise "Retry on #{response.code}" end

return response end rescue => e retry if retries < max_retries raise e end end

response = fetch_via_proxy('https://example.com') puts response.body ```

Geo-Targeted Requests

Append a country code to the proxy username for geo-targeting:

geo_user = "#{ENV['PROXY_USER']}-country-gb"
proxy_class = Net::HTTP::Proxy('gate.hexproxies.com', 8080, geo_user, ENV['PROXY_PASS'])

Common Pitfalls

Net::HTTP defaults to no timeout — requests through an unresponsive proxy will hang indefinitely. Always set `open_timeout` (for the proxy connection handshake) and `read_timeout` (for response data) explicitly. Another common issue: forgetting `use_ssl: true` for HTTPS targets causes the request to fail silently or return garbled data.

Net::HTTP::Proxy creates a new class, not an instance. Call `.start()` or `.new()` on the returned class to create connections. Each connection goes through the proxy with the configured credentials.

When to Use Net::HTTP vs Gems

Net::HTTP works for basic proxy needs without adding dependencies. For higher concurrency, use Typhoeus (libcurl-based parallelism). For stateful browsing with forms and cookies, use Mechanize. For middleware-based HTTP pipelines, use Faraday.