I have a Node.js application that is an http client (at the moment). So I'm doing:
var query = require('querystring').stringify(propertiesObject);
http.get(url + query, function(res) {
console.log("Got response: " + res.statusCode);
}).on('error', function(e) {
console.log("Got error: " + e.message);
});
This seems like a good enough way to accomplish this. However I'm somewhat miffed that I had to do the url + query
step. This should be encapsulated by a common library, but I don't see this existing in node's http
library yet and I'm not sure what standard npm package might accomplish it. Is there a reasonably widely used way that's better?
url.format method saves the work of building own URL. But ideally the request will be higher level than this also.
Check out the request module.
It's more full featured than node's built-in http client.
var request = require('request');
var propertiesObject = { field1:'test1', field2:'test2' };
request({url:url, qs:propertiesObject}, function(err, response, body) {
if(err) { console.log(err); return; }
console.log("Get response: " + response.statusCode);
});
If you don't want use external package , Just add the following function in your utilities :
var params=function(req){
let q=req.url.split('?'),result={};
if(q.length>=2){
q[1].split('&').forEach((item)=>{
try {
result[item.split('=')[0]]=item.split('=')[1];
} catch (e) {
result[item.split('=')[0]]='';
}
})
}
return result;
}
Then , in createServer
call back , add attribute params
to request
object :
http.createServer(function(req,res){
req.params=params(req); // call the function above ;
/**
* http://mysite/add?name=Ahmed
*/
console.log(req.params.name) ; // display : "Ahmed"
})
I have been struggling with how to add query string parameters to my URL. I couldn't make it work until I realized that I needed to add ?
at the end of my URL, otherwise it won't work. This is very important as it will save you hours of debugging, believe me: been there...done that.
Below, is a simple API Endpoint that calls the Open Weather API and passes APPID
, lat
and lon
as query parameters and return weather data as a JSON
object. Hope this helps.
//Load the request module
var request = require('request');
//Load the query String module
var querystring = require('querystring');
// Load OpenWeather Credentials
var OpenWeatherAppId = require('../config/third-party').openWeather;
router.post('/getCurrentWeather', function (req, res) {
var urlOpenWeatherCurrent = 'http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?'
var queryObject = {
APPID: OpenWeatherAppId.appId,
lat: req.body.lat,
lon: req.body.lon
}
console.log(queryObject)
request({
url:urlOpenWeatherCurrent,
qs: queryObject
}, function (error, response, body) {
if (error) {
console.log('error:', error); // Print the error if one occurred
} else if(response && body) {
console.log('statusCode:', response && response.statusCode); // Print the response status code if a response was received
res.json({'body': body}); // Print JSON response.
}
})
})
Or if you want to use the querystring
module, make the following changes
var queryObject = querystring.stringify({
APPID: OpenWeatherAppId.appId,
lat: req.body.lat,
lon: req.body.lon
});
request({
url:urlOpenWeatherCurrent + queryObject
}, function (error, response, body) {...})