A Faraday::Connection uses a Faraday::RackBuilder to assemble a Rack-inspired middleware stack for making HTTP requests. Each middleware runs and passes an Env object around to the next one. After the final middleware has run, Faraday will return a Faraday::Response to the end user.

The order in which middleware is stacked is important. Like with Rack, the first middleware on the list wraps all others, while the last middleware is the innermost one, so that must be the adapter.

Faraday.new(...) do |conn|
  # POST/PUT params encoders:
  conn.request :multipart
  conn.request :url_encoded

  # Last middleware must be the adapter:
  conn.adapter :net_http
end

This request middleware setup affects POST/PUT requests in the following way:

1. Request::Multipart checks for files in the payload, otherwise leaves everything untouched;
2. Request::UrlEncoded encodes as “application/x-www-form-urlencoded” if not already encoded or of another type

Swapping middleware means giving the other priority. Specifying the “Content-Type” for the request is explicitly stating which middleware should process it.

Examples:

# uploading a file:
payload[:profile_pic] = Faraday::FilePart.new('/path/to/avatar.jpg', 'image/jpeg')

# "Multipart" middleware detects files and encodes with "multipart/form-data":
conn.put '/profile', payload