URI builder makes working with URLs in Ruby a little less awkward by chaining methods calls that alter the URL. It looks like this:

URI.build("https://www.example.com/api/v1").path("/api/v2").query(search: "great books").uri

Or if you prefer a block format that automatically converts back to an URI object after the transformation.

URI.build("https://www.example.com/api/v1") { _1.path("/api/v2").query search: "great books" }

Compare that to:

uri = URI("https://www.example.com/api/v1")
uri.path = "/api/v2"
uri.query = URI.encode_www_form(search: "great books")
uri

There's even a shortcut for working with URLs from ENV vars:

URI.env("API_URL").path("/people/search").query(first_name: "Brad")

Compare that to:

uri = URI ENV.fetch("API_URL")
uri.path = "/people/search"
uri.query = URI.encode_www_form(first_name: "Brad")
uri

Each chain creates a duplicate of the original URL, so you can transform away without worrying about thrashing the original URL object.

Install the gem and add to the application's Gemfile by executing:

$ bundle add uri-builder

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

$ gem install uri-builder

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/rubymonolith/uri-builder.