Blocking HTTP GET request with ureq

ureq was recommended as a better alternative to reqwest for blocking requests.

In this example we'll see how to use it to send a simple GET request.

Dependencies

[package]
name = "get"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2024"

[dependencies]
ureq = "3.1.2"

Code

get_url just gets the url from the command line

We get a response that can be either a good response or an error. In case of a good response we can print the content of the response.

Success

$ cargo run http://localhost/get

GET request to: http://localhost/get
Status: 200 OK
------- Headers --------
server: "gunicorn/19.9.0"
date: "Tue, 14 Oct 2025 10:07:54 GMT"
connection: "keep-alive"
content-type: "application/json"
content-length: "210"
access-control-allow-origin: "*"
access-control-allow-credentials: "true"
------- Body --------
Body: {
  "args": {}, 
  "headers": {
    "Accept": "*/*", 
    "Accept-Encoding": "gzip", 
    "Host": "localhost", 
    "User-Agent": "ureq/3.1.2"
  }, 
  "origin": "172.17.0.1", 
  "url": "http://localhost/get"
}

404 status code

$ cargo run -q http://localhost/status/404

GET request to: http://localhost/status/404
Error: http status: 404

500 status code

$ cargo run -q http://localhost/status/500

GET request to: http://localhost/status/500
Error: http status: 500

Redirect:

This will follow the redirect and thus it will print out the content of the target web site.

$ cargo run "http://localhost/redirect-to?url=https://rust.code-maven.com/&status_code=301"

fn main() {
    let url = get_url();
    println!("GET request to: {}", url);
    let response = ureq::get(&url).call();
    match response {
        Ok(mut resp) => {
            println!("Status: {}", resp.status());

            println!("------- Headers --------");
            resp.headers_mut().iter().for_each(|(k, v)| {
                println!("{}: {:?}", k, v);
            });

            println!("------- Body --------");
            let body = resp.body_mut();
            if let Ok(content) = body.read_to_string() {
                println!("Body: {content}");
            } else {
                eprintln!("Failed to read response body");
                return;
            };
        }
        Err(err) => {
            eprintln!("Error: {}", err);
        }
    }
}

fn get_url() -> String {
    let args = std::env::args().collect::<Vec<String>>();
    if args.len() < 2 {
        eprintln!("Usage: {} <URL>", args[0]);
        std::process::exit(1);
    }
    args[1].clone()
}

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