Ruby, forming API request without implicitly stating each parameter - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm trying to make a request to a web service (fwix), and in my rails app I've created the following initializer, which works... sorta, I have two problems however:
For some reason the values of the parameters need to have +'s as the spaces, is this a standard thing that I can accomplish with ruby? Additionally is this a standard way to form a url? I thought that spaces were %20.
In my code how can I take any of the options sent in and just use them instead of having to state each one like query_items << "api_key=#{options[:api_key]}" if options[:api_key]
The following is my code, the trouble area I'm having are the lines starting with query_items for each parameter in the last method, any ideas would be awesome!
require 'httparty'
module Fwix
class API
include HTTParty
class JSONParser < HTTParty::Parser
def json
JSON.parse(body)
end
end
parser JSONParser
base_uri "http://geoapi.fwix.com"
def self.query(options = {})
begin
query_url = query_url(options)
puts "querying: #{base_uri}#{query_url}"
response = get( query_url )
rescue
raise "Connection to Fwix API failed" if response.nil?
end
end
def self.query_url(input_options = {})
#defaults ||= {
:api_key => "my_api_key",
}
options = #defaults.merge(input_options)
query_url = "/content.json?"
query_items = []
query_items << "api_key=#{options[:api_key]}" if options[:api_key]
query_items << "province=#{options[:province]}" if options[:province]
query_items << "city=#{options[:city]}" if options[:city]
query_items << "address=#{options[:address]}" if options[:address]
query_url += query_items.join('&')
query_url
end
end
end

Answer 1

For 1)
You API provider is expecting '+' because the API is expecting in a CGI formatted string instead of URL formatted string.
require 'cgi'
my_query = "hel lo"
CGI.escape(my_query)
this should give you
"hel+lo"
as you expect
for Question 2) I would do something like
query_items = options.keys.collect { |key| "#{key.to_s}=#{options[key]}" }

Answer 2

def self.query_url(input_options = {})
options = {
:api_key => "my_api_key",
}.merge(input_options)
query_url = "/content.json?"
query_items = []
options.each { |k, v| query_items << "#{k}=#{v.gsub(/\s/, '+')}" }
query_url += query_items.join('&')
end

Answer 3

I'm a developer at Fwix and wanted to help you with your url escaping issue. However, escaping with %20 works for me:
wget 'http://geoapi.fwix.com/content.xml?api_key=mark&province=ca&city=san%20francisco&query=gavin%20newsom'
I was hoping you could provide me with the specific request you're making that you're unable to escape with %20.