Method headers overriding default_options[:headers]

[Jordan Gardner]

I'm relatively new to Ruby and I came across some interesting behavior that I wanted some input on.  I have a class that has some static headers, but the authorization token expires every so often, so I want it updated whenever I make a method call.  Here's what I had originally:

require 'httparty'
require 'json'

module Connector

  class Authentication
    include HTTParty
    base_uri "https://api.connector.com/v1"
    headers "Content-Type" => "application/json"
    headers "Accept" => "application/json"
   
    def self.access_token
      # This method returns the cached
      # access_token unless it hasn't been set
      # yet, in which case it requests a new
      # one from the API.
      ...
    end

  end
 
  class Users
    include HTTParty
    base_uri "https://api.connector.com/v1"
    headers "Content-Type" => "application/json"
    headers "Accept" => "application/json"

    def self.create
      data = {
        ...
      }.to_json
      resp = post("/users", :body => data, :headers => { "Authorization" => "Bearer #{ Connector::Authentication.access_token }" })
     
      # Handle response
      ...
    end
  end

end

I was having issues when I tried to run Connector::Users.create().  It took me a while to realize that by including the :headers hash within the post() method call, I was overriding the Content-Type and Accept headers set in the class definition.  My solution for now was to remove the :headers hash from the post() method call and just set it at the start of the my create() method as follows:

class Users
  include HTTParty
  base_uri "https://api.connector.com/v1"
  headers "Content-Type" => "application/json"
  headers "Accept" => "application/json"

  def self.create
    # Update access_token before posting
    headers "Authorization" => "Bearer #{ Connector::Authentication.access_token }"

    # Perform post
    data = {
      ...
    }.to_json
    resp = post("/users", :body => data)

    # Handle response
    ...
  end
end

Once I figured it out it made sense, but I felt like the behavior of overriding the previously set headers was a little strange.  I readily recognize that I'm new to Ruby and I may just not understand certain conventions, of which this might be one.  I wanted to get some feedback though and find out what others who are more experienced would do.  Does my solution look Ruby-ish? Or would it have been more appropriate to do something like this:

post("/users", :body => data, :headers => default_options[:headers].merge({ "Authorization" => "Bearer #{ Connector::Authentication.access_token }" }))

Or, just maybe, is this behavior that should be altered so that :headers set within a request method are simply merged with the default_options[:headers]?