HTTP GET Request in Node.js Express

Question

How can I make an HTTP request from within Node.js or Express.js? I need to connect to another service. I am hoping the call is asynchronous and that the callback contains the remote server's response.

Answer 1

Request and Superagent are pretty good libraries to use.

Using request:

var request=require('request');

request.get('https://someplace',options,function(err,res,body){
  if(err) //TODO: handle err
  if(res.statusCode === 200 ) //etc
  //TODO Do something with response
});

Answer 2

Check out httpreq: it's a node library I created because I was frustrated there was no simple http GET or POST module out there ;-)

Answer 3

## you can use request module and promise in express to make any request ##
const promise                       = require('promise');
const requestModule                 = require('request');

const curlRequest =(requestOption) =>{
    return new Promise((resolve, reject)=> {
        requestModule(requestOption, (error, response, body) => {
            try {
                if (error) {
                    throw error;
                }
                if (body) {

                    try {
                        body = (body) ? JSON.parse(body) : body;
                        resolve(body);
                    }catch(error){
                        resolve(body);
                    }

                } else {

                    throw new Error('something wrong');
                }
            } catch (error) {

                reject(error);
            }
        })
    })
};

const option = {
    url : uri,
    method : "GET",
    headers : {

    }
};


curlRequest(option).then((data)=>{
}).catch((err)=>{
})

Answer 4

Try using the simple http.get(options, callback) function in node.js:

var http = require('http');
var options = {
  host: 'www.google.com',
  path: '/index.html'
};

var req = http.get(options, function(res) {
  console.log('STATUS: ' + res.statusCode);
  console.log('HEADERS: ' + JSON.stringify(res.headers));

  // Buffer the body entirely for processing as a whole.
  var bodyChunks = [];
  res.on('data', function(chunk) {
    // You can process streamed parts here...
    bodyChunks.push(chunk);
  }).on('end', function() {
    var body = Buffer.concat(bodyChunks);
    console.log('BODY: ' + body);
    // ...and/or process the entire body here.
  })
});

req.on('error', function(e) {
  console.log('ERROR: ' + e.message);
});

There is also a general http.request(options, callback) function which allows you to specify the request method and other request details.

Answer 5

You can also use Requestify, a really cool and very simple HTTP client I wrote for nodeJS + it supports caching.

Just do the following for GET method request:

var requestify = require('requestify');

requestify.get('http://example.com/api/resource')
  .then(function(response) {
      // Get the response body (JSON parsed or jQuery object for XMLs)
      response.getBody();
  }
);

Answer 6

Check out shred. It's a node HTTP client created and maintained by spire.io that handles redirects, sessions, and JSON responses. It's great for interacting with rest APIs. See this blog post for more details.