curl request to HTTParty request - api

Question

I have very little experience with APIs can someone please help me translate this:
$ curl -X POST -d "login_id=myemail#email.com&api_key=231421423423423423423" \
https://devapi.testapi.com/v2/authenticate/api
to something like this?:
include HTTParty
base_uri 'https://devapi.testapi.com'
def login
response = self.class.post( "/v2/authenticate/api",
:headers => { "login_id" => 'myemail#email.com', "api_key" => '231421423423423423423' }
).parsed_response
#token = response["auth_token"]
return #token
end
I'm not sure where to put login_id and api_key so that they would appear at the beginning of the request address instead of the end.

Answer 1

First, we need to clear up some confusion. When you send a POST request, like you did with Curl, it looks like this:
POST /v2/authenticate/api HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: curl/7.30.0
Host: localhost:8000
Accept: */*
Content-Length: 56
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
login_id=myemail#email.com&api_key=231421423423423423423
The first line is the request method (POST) and resource (/v2/authenticate/api) and the protocol version (HTTP/1.1). The next five lines are the headers, which always have a key (e.g. Content-Length), followed by a colon and space (:), followed by a value (56).
You'll notice that none of these headers have your data, i.e. login_id or api_key. Data doesn't go in the headers. It goes in the body, which is after the headers and an intervening blank line that tells the server, "the headers are done; everything else I send is the body."
Hopefully that will help clear up the confusion that I see here:
I'm not sure where to put login_id and api_key so that they would appear at the beginning of the request address instead of the end.
In a POST request the data is not part of the address, nor is it, to reiterate, part of the headers. It's the body.
When making a POST request with HTTParty, you could use the :body option to specify a string to use as the POST body, but in your Ruby code it looks like you'd rather use a Hash, which is the right way to go. With a Hash, you use the :query option instead of :body, and HTTParty will automatically encode the Hash's contents correctly. Using that, your code would look like this:
query_hash = { :login_id => 'myemail#email.com',
:api_key => '231421423423423423423' }
response = self.class.post("/v2/authenticate/api", :query => query_hash)