Question

Is there anyway to get Ruby’s require statement to download a file from somewhere like github rather than just the local file system?

Update: Sorry I should have made the question clearer. I want to download a file that contains Ruby module and import it into my script rather than just downloading an image or some other arbitrary file within my script.

In other words something like this

require 'http:\\github.com\myrepo\snippet.rb'

puts 'hi'

Answer 1

By default, this is not possible. Also, it’s not a good idea for security reasons.

You have a couple of alternatives. If the file you want to include is a Gem and Git repository, then you can use Bundler to download and package the dependency in your project. Then you’ll be able to require the file directly in your source code.

This is the best and safest way to include an external dependency.

If you trust the source and you really know what you are doing, you can download the file using Net::HTTP (or any other HTTP library) and eval the body directly in your Ruby code.
You can package everything in a custom require_remote function.