How do I bypass SSL certificate verification in Ruby while scraping?

In Ruby, you can bypass SSL certificate verification while scraping by modifying the OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER option in your HTTP request. This is particularly useful when you are dealing with self-signed certificates or certificates that are not issued by a trusted certificate authority.

Warning: Disabling SSL verification poses a security risk. It makes the HTTP request vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. You should only do this if you are sure that the data you are dealing with is not sensitive and the connection is not at risk of being intercepted by malicious parties.

Here's how to bypass SSL verification using Ruby's Net::HTTP library:

require 'net/http'
require 'openssl'

url = URI.parse('https://example.com/some_page')

http = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port)
http.use_ssl = true
http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE # This disables SSL verification

request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url.request_uri)

response = http.request(request)
puts response.body

The key line in this example is http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE, which tells Ruby's Net::HTTP not to verify the SSL certificate.

If you are using an HTTP client gem like Faraday or HTTParty, you can also disable SSL verification in their respective configuration options:

For Faraday:

require 'faraday'

conn = Faraday.new(url: 'https://example.com/some_page', ssl: { verify: false }) do |faraday|
  faraday.adapter Faraday.default_adapter
end

response = conn.get
puts response.body

For HTTParty:

require 'httparty'

response = HTTParty.get('https://example.com/some_page', verify: false)
puts response.body

Again, I want to emphasize the importance of using SSL verification in production code or any situation where security is a concern. Disabling SSL verification should only be used in controlled environments for testing or when interacting with trusted internal networks where encryption is not the primary concern.