Demonstrating of why HTTPClient response headers are serialized as base64 strings when using psych

use_httpclient.rb

require 'httpclient'

client = HTTPClient.new
response = client.request(:get, "http://google.com/", nil, '', {})

puts "Headers:"
response.headers.each do |key, value|
  puts "#{key} (#{key.encoding.name}): #{value} (#{value.encoding.name})"
end

use_httpclient_output

➜ ruby --version
ruby 1.9.3p194 (2012-04-20 revision 35410) [x86_64-darwin10.8.0]
➜ ruby use_httpclient.rb
Headers:
Location (ASCII-8BIT): http://www.google.com/ (ASCII-8BIT)
Content-Type (ASCII-8BIT): text/html; charset=UTF-8 (ASCII-8BIT)
Date (ASCII-8BIT): Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:13:59 GMT (ASCII-8BIT)
Expires (ASCII-8BIT): Wed, 04 Jul 2012 20:13:59 GMT (ASCII-8BIT)
Cache-Control (ASCII-8BIT): public, max-age=2592000 (ASCII-8BIT)
Server (ASCII-8BIT): gws (ASCII-8BIT)
Content-Length (ASCII-8BIT): 219 (ASCII-8BIT)
X-XSS-Protection (ASCII-8BIT): 1; mode=block (ASCII-8BIT)
X-Frame-Options (ASCII-8BIT): SAMEORIGIN (ASCII-8BIT)

use_psych.rb

require 'yaml'

string = "A string"
string.force_encoding('ASCII-8BIT')

puts "YAML:"
puts string.to_yaml

puts "\nRoundtripped:"
puts YAML.load(string.to_yaml)

use_psych_output

➜ ruby --version
ruby 1.9.3p194 (2012-04-20 revision 35410) [x86_64-darwin10.8.0]
➜ ruby use_psych.rb
YAML:
--- !binary |-
  QSBzdHJpbmc=

Roundtripped:
A string