I'm trying to get my function to return the http get request, however, whatever I do it seems to get lost in the ?scope?. I'm quit new to Node.js so any help would be appreciated
function getData(){
var http = require('http');
var str = '';
var options = {
host: 'www.random.org',
path: '/integers/?num=1&min=1&max=10&col=1&base=10&format=plain&rnd=new'
};
callback = function(response) {
response.on('data', function (chunk) {
str += chunk;
});
response.on('end', function () {
console.log(str);
});
//return str;
}
var req = http.request(options, callback).end();
// These just return undefined and empty
console.log(req.data);
console.log(str);
}
Of course your logs return undefined
: you log before the request is done. The problem isn't scope but asynchronicity.
http.request
is asynchronous, that's why it takes a callback as parameter. Do what you have to do in the callback (the one you pass to response.end
):
callback = function(response) {
response.on('data', function (chunk) {
str += chunk;
});
response.on('end', function () {
console.log(req.data);
console.log(str);
// your code here if you want to use the results !
});
}
var req = http.request(options, callback).end();
Shorter example using http.get:
require('http').get('http://httpbin.org/ip', (res) => {
res.setEncoding('utf8');
res.on('data', function (body) {
console.log(body);
});
});
from learnyounode:
var http = require('http')
http.get(options, function (response) {
response.setEncoding('utf8')
response.on('data', console.log)
response.on('error', console.error)
})
'options' is the host/path variable
from learnyounode:
var http = require('http')
var bl = require('bl')
http.get(process.argv[2], function (response) {
response.pipe(bl(function (err, data) {
if (err)
return console.error(err)
data = data.toString()
console.log(data)
}))
})
This is my solution, although for sure you can use a lot of modules that give you the object as a promise or similar. Anyway, you were missing another callback
function getData(callbackData){
var http = require('http');
var str = '';
var options = {
host: 'www.random.org',
path: '/integers/?num=1&min=1&max=10&col=1&base=10&format=plain&rnd=new'
};
callback = function(response) {
response.on('data', function (chunk) {
str += chunk;
});
response.on('end', function () {
console.log(str);
callbackData(str);
});
//return str;
}
var req = http.request(options, callback).end();
// These just return undefined and empty
console.log(req.data);
console.log(str);
}
somewhere else
getData(function(data){
// YOUR CODE HERE!!!
})