HTTParty and non 200 response codes, cache & etags and a few other quirks

I've been playing with HTTParty to help me automate tests for an API, while its is a great gem, I found some documentation and guides lacking.

What happens when you add to your request an ETAG (for cache) and the server returns an 304 (not modified)? I'll tell you what happens, you'll get a "nil"!

No really, you get a nil!

Now, this confused the shit out me, and I've googled on and on about it, but found nothing really useful, until, for some reason I found deep into the specification my answer:

    describe 'with non-200 responses' do      context "3xx responses" do        it 'returns a valid object for 304 not modified' do          stub_response '', 304          resp = @request.perform          resp.code.should == 304          resp.body.should == ''          resp.should be_nil        end

"should be nil?" Well, that make no sense! It turns out that your nil object has some methods injected into it, because... I don't know, someone thought it was intuitive and easy - I .... disagree... 

So, how we deal with this?

Something like:

res = HTTParty.get 'someurl', headers:{'If-none-match': 'some e-tag you got from earlier'}
res.code #=> 304
res.class #=> Nilclass

This is also valid for other responses with no body that HTTParty thinks is fun to turn into nils, because if you don't have the body for it, you can't party.