When the :update_content_length_header option is set to a truthy value, VCR will ensure that the Content-Length header will have the correct value. This is useful in several situations:
- When you manually edit the cassette file and change the resonse body
length. You can use this option so you don't have to manually calculate
and update the body length.
- When you use ERB, the response body length may vary. This will ensure
it is always correct.
- Syck, the default YAML engine for ruby 1.8 (and 1.9, unless you compile
it to use Psych), has a bug where it sometimes will remove some
whitespace strings when you serialize them. This may cause the
`Content-Length` header to have the wrong value.
This is especially important when you use a client that checks the Content-Length header. Mechanize, for example, will raise an EOFError when the header value does not match the actual body length.
Background
Given a previously recorded cassette file "cassettes/example.yml" with: