How to make an HTTP POST request in node.js?

Question

How can I make an outbound HTTP POST request, with data, in node.js?

Answer 1

Here's an example of using node.js to make a POST request to the Google Compiler API:

// We need this to build our post string
var querystring = require('querystring');
var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');

function PostCode(codestring) {
  // Build the post string from an object
  var post_data = querystring.stringify({
      'compilation_level' : 'ADVANCED_OPTIMIZATIONS',
      'output_format': 'json',
      'output_info': 'compiled_code',
        'warning_level' : 'QUIET',
        'js_code' : codestring
  });

  // An object of options to indicate where to post to
  var post_options = {
      host: 'closure-compiler.appspot.com',
      port: '80',
      path: '/compile',
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
          'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
          'Content-Length': Buffer.byteLength(post_data)
      }
  };

  // Set up the request
  var post_req = http.request(post_options, function(res) {
      res.setEncoding('utf8');
      res.on('data', function (chunk) {
          console.log('Response: ' + chunk);
      });
  });

  // post the data
  post_req.write(post_data);
  post_req.end();

}

// This is an async file read
fs.readFile('LinkedList.js', 'utf-8', function (err, data) {
  if (err) {
    // If this were just a small part of the application, you would
    // want to handle this differently, maybe throwing an exception
    // for the caller to handle. Since the file is absolutely essential
    // to the program's functionality, we're going to exit with a fatal
    // error instead.
    console.log("FATAL An error occurred trying to read in the file: " + err);
    process.exit(-2);
  }
  // Make sure there's data before we post it
  if(data) {
    PostCode(data);
  }
  else {
    console.log("No data to post");
    process.exit(-1);
  }
});

I've updated the code to show how to post data from a file, instead of the hardcoded string. It uses the async fs.readFile command to achieve this, posting the actual code after a successful read. If there's an error, it is thrown, and if there's no data the process exits with a negative value to indicate failure.

Answer 2

Simple and dependency-free. Uses a Promise so that you can await the result. It returns the response body and does not check the response status code.

const https = require('https');

function httpsPost({body, ...options}) {
    return new Promise((resolve,reject) => {
        const req = https.request({
            method: 'POST',
            ...options,
        }, res => {
            const chunks = [];
            res.on('data', data => chunks.push(data))
            res.on('end', () => {
                let body = Buffer.concat(chunks);
                switch(res.headers['content-type']) {
                    case 'application/json':
                        body = JSON.parse(body);
                        break;
                }
                resolve(body)
            })
        })
        req.on('error',reject);
        if(body) {
            req.write(body);
        }
        req.end();
    })
}

Usage:

const res = await httpsPost({
    hostname: 'sentry.io',
    path: `/api/0/organizations/org/releases/${changesetId}/deploys/`,
    headers: {
        'Authorization': `Bearer ${process.env.SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN}`,
        'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
        environment: isLive ? 'production' : 'demo',
    })
})

Answer 3

After struggling a lot while creating a low level utility to handle the post and get requests for my project, I decided to post my effort here. Much on the lines of accepted answer, here is a snippet for making http and https POST requests for sending JSON data.

const http = require("http")
const https = require("https")

// Request handler function
let postJSON = (options, postData, callback) => {

    // Serializing JSON
    post_data = JSON.stringify(postData)

    let port = options.port == 443 ? https : http

    // Callback function for the request
    let req = port.request(options, (res) => {
        let output = ''
        res.setEncoding('utf8')

        // Listener to receive data
        res.on('data', (chunk) => {
            output += chunk
        });

        // Listener for intializing callback after receiving complete response
        res.on('end', () => {
            let obj = JSON.parse(output)
            callback(res.statusCode, obj)
        });
    });

   // Handle any errors occurred while making request
    req.on('error', (err) => {
        //res.send('error: ' + err.message)
    });

    // Request is made here, with data as string or buffer
    req.write(post_data)
    // Ending the request
    req.end()
};

let callPost = () => {

    let data = {
        'name': 'Jon',
        'message': 'hello, world'
    }

    let options = {
        host: 'domain.name',       // Your domain name
        port: 443,                 // 443 for https and 80 for http
        path: '/path/to/resource', // Path for the request
        method: 'POST',            
        headers: {
            'Content-Type': 'application/json',
            'Content-Length': Buffer.byteLength(data)
        }
    }

    postJSON(options, data, (statusCode, result) => {
        // Handle response
        // Process the received data
    });

}

Answer 4

This gets a lot easier if you use the request library.

var request = require('request');

request.post(
    'http://www.yoursite.com/formpage',
    { json: { key: 'value' } },
    function (error, response, body) {
        if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
            console.log(body)
        }
    }
);

Aside from providing a nice syntax it makes json requests easy, handles oauth signing (for twitter, etc.), can do multi-part forms (e.g. for uploading files) and streaming.

To install request use command npm install request

Answer 5

var https = require('https');


/**
 * HOW TO Make an HTTP Call - POST
 */
// do a POST request
// create the JSON object
jsonObject = JSON.stringify({
    "message" : "The web of things is approaching, let do some tests to be ready!",
    "name" : "Test message posted with node.js",
    "caption" : "Some tests with node.js",
    "link" : "http://www.youscada.com",
    "description" : "this is a description",
    "picture" : "http://youscada.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/logo2.png",
    "actions" : [ {
        "name" : "youSCADA",
        "link" : "http://www.youscada.com"
    } ]
});

// prepare the header
var postheaders = {
    'Content-Type' : 'application/json',
    'Content-Length' : Buffer.byteLength(jsonObject, 'utf8')
};

// the post options
var optionspost = {
    host : 'graph.facebook.com',
    port : 443,
    path : '/youscada/feed?access_token=your_api_key',
    method : 'POST',
    headers : postheaders
};

console.info('Options prepared:');
console.info(optionspost);
console.info('Do the POST call');

// do the POST call
var reqPost = https.request(optionspost, function(res) {
    console.log("statusCode: ", res.statusCode);
    // uncomment it for header details
//  console.log("headers: ", res.headers);

    res.on('data', function(d) {
        console.info('POST result:\n');
        process.stdout.write(d);
        console.info('\n\nPOST completed');
    });
});

// write the json data
reqPost.write(jsonObject);
reqPost.end();
reqPost.on('error', function(e) {
    console.error(e);
});

Answer 6

By using request dependency.

Simple solution :

 import request from 'request'
 var data = {
        "host":"127.1.1.1",
        "port":9008
    }

request.post( baseUrl + '/peers/connect',
        {
            json: data,  // your payload data placed here
            headers: {
                'X-Api-Key': 'dajzmj6gfuzmbfnhamsbuxivc', // if authentication needed
                'Content-Type': 'application/json' 
            }
        }, function (error, response, body) {
            if (error) {
                callback(error, null)
            } else {
                callback(error, response.body)
            }
        });