Open remote URL returns empty string?

Question

I was using the following code snippet, which was working, to fetch the JSON response from the Spotify oEmbed API.

I was doing this:

response = JSON.parse(open("https://embed.spotify.com/oembed/?url=http://open.spotify.com/album/5Mxj65mCzxUjDkoqz7JXPJ").read)

But now, this stopped working because:

2.0.0p247 :017 > open("https://embed.spotify.com/oembed/?url=http://open.spotify.com/album/5Mxj65mCzxUjDkoqz7JXPJ").read
 => ""

But, using cURL, I get:

$curl https://embed.spotify.com/oembed/\?url\=http://open.spotify.com/album/5Mxj65mCzxUjDkoqz7JXPJ
{"provider_url":"https:\/\/www.spotify.com","version":"1.0","thumbnail_width":300,"height":380,"thumbnail_height":300,"title":"Illum Sphere - 13. Embryonic","width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/d3rt1990lpmkn.cloudfront.net\/cover\/d4f5d8624752eeae3dc8bc3d58e2155d095181c1","provider_name":"Spotify","type":"rich","html":"<iframe src=\"https:\/\/embed.spotify.com\/?uri=spotify:album:5Mxj65mCzxUjDkoqz7JXPJ\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe>"}

Any advice?

Answer 1

Try passing the User-Agent:

require 'open-uri'
puts open("https://embed.spotify.com/oembed/?url=http://open.spotify.com/album/5Mxj65mCzxUjDkoqz7JXPJ", "User-Agent" => "Ruby/#{RUBY_VERSION}").read

Result:

{"provider_url":"https:\/\/www.spotify.com","version":"1.0","thumbnail_width":300,"height":380,"thumbnail_height":300,"title":"
Illum Sphere - 13. Embryonic","width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/d3rt1990lpmkn.cloudfront.net\/cover\/d4f5d8624752eeae3dc8b
c3d58e2155d095181c1","provider_name":"Spotify","type":"rich","html":"<iframe src=\"https:\/\/embed.spotify.com\/?uri=spotify:al
bum:5Mxj65mCzxUjDkoqz7JXPJ\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowtransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe>"}