got it ungzipping gzip stream and the get works

classes/nvd_downloader.rb

@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 require 'rest-client'
+require 'zlib'
+require 'json'
 
 class NvdDownloader
     attr_accessor :base_url, :years
@@ -22,9 +24,18 @@ class NvdDownloader
         years[year]
     end
 
-
     def get(url)
-
+        r = RestClient.get "#{base_url}#{url}"
+        r.body if r.code == 200
     end
 
+    def read_gzip_stream(gzip_stream)
+        io_stream = StringIO.new(gzip_stream)
+        gz = Zlib::GzipReader.new(io_stream)
+        gz.read
+    end
+
+    def parse_json(json_string)
+        JSON.parse(json_string)
+    end
 end