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Simplified HTTP request client.
Filed under dataShow AllDeprecated!
As of Feb 11th 2020, request is fully deprecated. No new changes are expected to land. In fact, none have landed for some time.
For more information about why request is deprecated and possible alternatives refer to this issue.
Request - Simplified HTTP client
Super simple to use
Request is designed to be the simplest way possible to make http calls. It supports HTTPS and follows redirects by default.
const request = require('request'); request('http://www.google.com', function (error, response, body) { console.error('error:', error); // Print the error if one occurred console.log('statusCode:', response && response.statusCode); // Print the response status code if a response was received console.log('body:', body); // Print the HTML for the Google homepage. });
Table of contents
- Streaming
- Promises & Async/Await
- Forms
- HTTP Authentication
- Custom HTTP Headers
- OAuth Signing
- Proxies
- Unix Domain Sockets
- TLS/SSL Protocol
- Support for HAR 1.2
- All Available Options
Request also offers convenience methods like
request.defaults
andrequest.post
, and there are lots of usage examples and several debugging techniques.
Streaming
You can stream any response to a file stream.
request('http://google.com/doodle.png').pipe(fs.createWriteStream('doodle.png'))
You can also stream a file to a PUT or POST request. This method will also check the file extension against a mapping of file extensions to content-types (in this case
application/json
) and use the propercontent-type
in the PUT request (if the headers don’t already provide one).fs.createReadStream('file.json').pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/obj.json'))
Request can also
pipe
to itself. When doing so,content-type
andcontent-length
are preserved in the PUT headers.request.get('http://google.com/img.png').pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/img.png'))
Request emits a "response" event when a response is received. The
response
argument will be an instance of http.IncomingMessage.request .get('http://google.com/img.png') .on('response', function(response) { console.log(response.statusCode) // 200 console.log(response.headers['content-type']) // 'image/png' }) .pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/img.png'))
To easily handle errors when streaming requests, listen to the
error
event before piping:request .get('http://mysite.com/doodle.png') .on('error', function(err) { console.error(err) }) .pipe(fs.createWriteStream('doodle.png'))
Now let’s get fancy.
http.createServer(function (req, resp) { if (req.url === '/doodle.png') { if (req.method === 'PUT') { req.pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/doodle.png')) } else if (req.method === 'GET' || req.method === 'HEAD') { request.get('http://mysite.com/doodle.png').pipe(resp) } } })
You can also
pipe()
fromhttp.ServerRequest
instances, as well as tohttp.ServerResponse
instances. The HTTP method, headers, and entity-body data will be sent. Which means that, if you don't really care about security, you can do:http.createServer(function (req, resp) { if (req.url === '/doodle.png') { const x = request('http://mysite.com/doodle.png') req.pipe(x) x.pipe(resp) } })
And since
pipe()
returns the destination stream in ≥ Node 0.5.x you can do one line proxying. :)req.pipe(request('http://mysite.com/doodle.png')).pipe(resp)
Also, none of this new functionality conflicts with requests previous features, it just expands them.
const r = request.defaults({'proxy':'http://localproxy.com'}) http.createServer(function (req, resp) { if (req.url === '/doodle.png') { r.get('http://google.com/doodle.png').pipe(resp) } })
You can still use intermediate proxies, the requests will still follow HTTP forwards, etc.
Promises & Async/Await
request
supports both streaming and callback interfaces natively. If you'd likerequest
to return a Promise instead, you can use an alternative interface wrapper forrequest
. These wrappers can be useful if you prefer to work with Promises, or if you'd like to useasync
/await
in ES2017.Several alternative interfaces are provided by the request team, including:
request-promise
(uses Bluebird Promises)request-promise-native
(uses native Promises)request-promise-any
(uses any-promise Promises)
Also,
util.promisify
, which is available from Node.js v8.0 can be used to convert a regular function that takes a callback to return a promise instead.
Forms
request
supportsapplication/x-www-form-urlencoded
andmultipart/form-data
form uploads. Formultipart/related
refer to themultipart
API.application/x-www-form-urlencoded (URL-Encoded Forms)
URL-encoded forms are simple.
request.post('http://service.com/upload', {form:{key:'value'}}) // or request.post('http://service.com/upload').form({key:'value'}) // or request.post({url:'http://service.com/upload', form: {key:'value'}}, function(err,httpResponse,body){ /* ... */ })
multipart/form-data (Multipart Form Uploads)
For
multipart/form-data
we use the form-data library by @felixge. For the most cases, you can pass your upload form data via theformData
option.const formData = { // Pass a simple key-value pair my_field: 'my_value', // Pass data via Buffers my_buffer: Buffer.from([1, 2, 3]), // Pass data via Streams my_file: fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/unicycle.jpg'), // Pass multiple values /w an Array attachments: [ fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/attachment1.jpg'), fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/attachment2.jpg') ], // Pass optional meta-data with an 'options' object with style: {value: DATA, options: OPTIONS} // Use case: for some types of streams, you'll need to provide "file"-related information manually. // See the `form-data` README for more information about options: https://github.com/form-data/form-data custom_file: { value: fs.createReadStream('/dev/urandom'), options: { filename: 'topsecret.jpg', contentType: 'image/jpeg' } } }; request.post({url:'http://service.com/upload', formData: formData}, function optionalCallback(err, httpResponse, body) { if (err) { return console.error('upload failed:', err); } console.log('Upload successful! Server responded with:', body); });
For advanced cases, you can access the form-data object itself via
r.form()
. This can be modified until the request is fired on the next cycle of the event-loop. (Note that this callingform()
will clear the currently set form data for that request.)// NOTE: Advanced use-case, for normal use see 'formData' usage above const r = request.post('http://service.com/upload', function optionalCallback(err, httpResponse, body) {...}) const form = r.form(); form.append('my_field', 'my_value'); form.append('my_buffer', Buffer.from([1, 2, 3])); form.append('custom_file', fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/unicycle.jpg'), {filename: 'unicycle.jpg'});
See the form-data README for more information & examples.
multipart/related
Some variations in different HTTP implementations require a newline/CRLF before, after, or both before and after the boundary of a
multipart/related
request (using the multipart option). This has been observed in the .NET WebAPI version 4.0. You can turn on a boundary preambleCRLF or postamble by passing them astrue
to your request options.request({ method: 'PUT', preambleCRLF: true, postambleCRLF: true, uri: 'http://service.com/upload', multipart: [ { 'content-type': 'application/json', body: JSON.stringify({foo: 'bar', _attachments: {'message.txt': {follows: true, length: 18, 'content_type': 'text/plain' }}}) }, { body: 'I am an attachment' }, { body: fs.createReadStream('image.png') } ], // alternatively pass an object containing additional options multipart: { chunked: false, data: [ { 'content-type': 'application/json', body: JSON.stringify({foo: 'bar', _attachments: {'message.txt': {follows: true, length: 18, 'content_type': 'text/plain' }}}) }, { body: 'I am an attachment' } ] } }, function (error, response, body) { if (error) { return console.error('upload failed:', error); } console.log('Upload successful! Server responded with:', body); })
HTTP Authentication
request.get('http://some.server.com/').auth('username', 'password', false); // or request.get('http://some.server.com/', { 'auth': { 'user': 'username', 'pass': 'password', 'sendImmediately': false } }); // or request.get('http://some.server.com/').auth(null, null, true, 'bearerToken'); // or request.get('http://some.server.com/', { 'auth': { 'bearer': 'bearerToken' } });
If passed as an option,
auth
should be a hash containing values:user
||username
pass
||password
sendImmediately
(optional)bearer
(optional)
The method form takes parameters
auth(username, password, sendImmediately, bearer)
.sendImmediately
defaults totrue
, which causes a basic or bearer authentication header to be sent. IfsendImmediately
isfalse
, thenrequest
will retry with a proper authentication header after receiving a401
response from the server (which must contain aWWW-Authenticate
header indicating the required authentication method).Note that you can also specify basic authentication using the URL itself, as detailed in RFC 1738. Simply pass the
user:password
before the host with an@
sign:const username = 'username', password = 'password', url = 'http://' + username + ':' + password + '@some.server.com'; request({url}, function (error, response, body) { // Do more stuff with 'body' here });
Digest authentication is supported, but it only works with
sendImmediately
set tofalse
; otherwiserequest
will send basic authentication on the initial request, which will probably cause the request to fail.Bearer authentication is supported, and is activated when the
bearer
value is available. The value may be either aString
or aFunction
returning aString
. Using a function to supply the bearer token is particularly useful if used in conjunction withdefaults
to allow a single function to supply the last known token at the time of sending a request, or to compute one on the fly.
Custom HTTP Headers
HTTP Headers, such as
User-Agent
, can be set in theoptions
object. In the example below, we call the github API to find out the number of stars and forks for the request repository. This requires a customUser-Agent
header as well as https.const request = require('request'); const options = { url: 'https://api.github.com/repos/request/request', headers: { 'User-Agent': 'request' } }; function callback(error, response, body) { if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) { const info = JSON.parse(body); console.log(info.stargazers_count + " Stars"); console.log(info.forks_count + " Forks"); } } request(options, callback);
OAuth Signing
OAuth version 1.0 is supported. The default signing algorithm is HMAC-SHA1:
// OAuth1.0 - 3-legged server side flow (Twitter example) // step 1 const qs = require('querystring') , oauth = { callback: 'http://mysite.com/callback/' , consumer_key: CONSUMER_KEY , consumer_secret: CONSUMER_SECRET } , url = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/request_token' ; request.post({url:url, oauth:oauth}, function (e, r, body) { // Ideally, you would take the body in the response // and construct a URL that a user clicks on (like a sign in button). // The verifier is only available in the response after a user has // verified with twitter that they are authorizing your app. // step 2 const req_data = qs.parse(body) const uri = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authenticate' + '?' + qs.stringify({oauth_token: req_data.oauth_token}) // redirect the user to the authorize uri // step 3 // after the user is redirected back to your server const auth_data = qs.parse(body) , oauth = { consumer_key: CONSUMER_KEY , consumer_secret: CONSUMER_SECRET , token: auth_data.oauth_token , token_secret: req_data.oauth_token_secret , verifier: auth_data.oauth_verifier } , url = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/access_token' ; request.post({url:url, oauth:oauth}, function (e, r, body) { // ready to make signed requests on behalf of the user const perm_data = qs.parse(body) , oauth = { consumer_key: CONSUMER_KEY , consumer_secret: CONSUMER_SECRET , token: perm_data.oauth_token , token_secret: perm_data.oauth_token_secret } , url = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/users/show.json' , qs = { screen_name: perm_data.screen_name , user_id: perm_data.user_id } ; request.get({url:url, oauth:oauth, qs:qs, json:true}, function (e, r, user) { console.log(user) }) }) })
For RSA-SHA1 signing, make the following changes to the OAuth options object:
- Pass
signature_method : 'RSA-SHA1'
- Instead of
consumer_secret
, specify aprivate_key
string in PEM format
For PLAINTEXT signing, make the following changes to the OAuth options object:
- Pass
signature_method : 'PLAINTEXT'
To send OAuth parameters via query params or in a post body as described in The Consumer Request Parameters section of the oauth1 spec:
- Pass
transport_method : 'query'
ortransport_method : 'body'
in the OAuth options object. transport_method
defaults to'header'
To use Request Body Hash you can either
- Manually generate the body hash and pass it as a string
body_hash: '...'
- Automatically generate the body hash by passing
body_hash: true
Proxies
If you specify a
proxy
option, then the request (and any subsequent redirects) will be sent via a connection to the proxy server.If your endpoint is an
https
url, and you are using a proxy, then request will send aCONNECT
request to the proxy server first, and then use the supplied connection to connect to the endpoint.That is, first it will make a request like:
HTTP/1.1 CONNECT endpoint-server.com:80 Host: proxy-server.com User-Agent: whatever user agent you specify
and then the proxy server make a TCP connection to
endpoint-server
on port80
, and return a response that looks like:HTTP/1.1 200 OK
At this point, the connection is left open, and the client is communicating directly with the
endpoint-server.com
machine.See the wikipedia page on HTTP Tunneling for more information.
By default, when proxying
http
traffic, request will simply make a standard proxiedhttp
request. This is done by making theurl
section of the initial line of the request a fully qualified url to the endpoint.For example, it will make a single request that looks like:
HTTP/1.1 GET http://endpoint-server.com/some-url Host: proxy-server.com Other-Headers: all go here request body or whatever
Because a pure "http over http" tunnel offers no additional security or other features, it is generally simpler to go with a straightforward HTTP proxy in this case. However, if you would like to force a tunneling proxy, you may set the
tunnel
option totrue
.You can also make a standard proxied
http
request by explicitly settingtunnel : false
, but note that this will allow the proxy to see the traffic to/from the destination server.If you are using a tunneling proxy, you may set the
proxyHeaderWhiteList
to share certain headers with the proxy.You can also set the
proxyHeaderExclusiveList
to share certain headers only with the proxy and not with destination host.By default, this set is:
accept accept-charset accept-encoding accept-language accept-ranges cache-control content-encoding content-language content-length content-location content-md5 content-range content-type connection date expect max-forwards pragma proxy-authorization referer te transfer-encoding user-agent via
Note that, when using a tunneling proxy, the
proxy-authorization
header and any headers from customproxyHeaderExclusiveList
are never sent to the endpoint server, but only to the proxy server.Controlling proxy behaviour using environment variables
The following environment variables are respected by
request
:HTTP_PROXY
/http_proxy
HTTPS_PROXY
/https_proxy
NO_PROXY
/no_proxy
When
HTTP_PROXY
/http_proxy
are set, they will be used to proxy non-SSL requests that do not have an explicitproxy
configuration option present. Similarly,HTTPS_PROXY
/https_proxy
will be respected for SSL requests that do not have an explicitproxy
configuration option. It is valid to define a proxy in one of the environment variables, but then override it for a specific request, using theproxy
configuration option. Furthermore, theproxy
configuration option can be explicitly set to false / null to opt out of proxying altogether for that request.request
is also aware of theNO_PROXY
/no_proxy
environment variables. These variables provide a granular way to opt out of proxying, on a per-host basis. It should contain a comma separated list of hosts to opt out of proxying. It is also possible to opt of proxying when a particular destination port is used. Finally, the variable may be set to*
to opt out of the implicit proxy configuration of the other environment variables.Here's some examples of valid
no_proxy
values:google.com
- don't proxy HTTP/HTTPS requests to Google.google.com:443
- don't proxy HTTPS requests to Google, but do proxy HTTP requests to Google.google.com:443, yahoo.com:80
- don't proxy HTTPS requests to Google, and don't proxy HTTP requests to Yahoo!*
- ignorehttps_proxy
/http_proxy
environment variables altogether.
UNIX Domain Sockets
request
supports making requests to UNIX Domain Sockets. To make one, use the following URL scheme:/* Pattern */ 'http://unix:SOCKET:PATH' /* Example */ request.get('http://unix:/absolute/path/to/unix.socket:/request/path')
Note: The
SOCKET
path is assumed to be absolute to the root of the host file system.
TLS/SSL Protocol
TLS/SSL Protocol options, such as
cert
,key
andpassphrase
, can be set directly inoptions
object, in theagentOptions
property of theoptions
object, or even inhttps.globalAgent.options
. Keep in mind that, althoughagentOptions
allows for a slightly wider range of configurations, the recommended way is viaoptions
object directly, as usingagentOptions
orhttps.globalAgent.options
would not be applied in the same way in proxied environments (as data travels through a TLS connection instead of an http/https agent).const fs = require('fs') , path = require('path') , certFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.crt') , keyFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.key') , caFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/ca.cert.pem') , request = require('request'); const options = { url: 'https://api.some-server.com/', cert: fs.readFileSync(certFile), key: fs.readFileSync(keyFile), passphrase: 'password', ca: fs.readFileSync(caFile) }; request.get(options);
Using
options.agentOptions
In the example below, we call an API that requires client side SSL certificate (in PEM format) with passphrase protected private key (in PEM format) and disable the SSLv3 protocol:
const fs = require('fs') , path = require('path') , certFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.crt') , keyFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.key') , request = require('request'); const options = { url: 'https://api.some-server.com/', agentOptions: { cert: fs.readFileSync(certFile), key: fs.readFileSync(keyFile), // Or use `pfx` property replacing `cert` and `key` when using private key, certificate and CA certs in PFX or PKCS12 format: // pfx: fs.readFileSync(pfxFilePath), passphrase: 'password', securityOptions: 'SSL_OP_NO_SSLv3' } }; request.get(options);
It is able to force using SSLv3 only by specifying
secureProtocol
:request.get({ url: 'https://api.some-server.com/', agentOptions: { secureProtocol: 'SSLv3_method' } });
It is possible to accept other certificates than those signed by generally allowed Certificate Authorities (CAs). This can be useful, for example, when using self-signed certificates. To require a different root certificate, you can specify the signing CA by adding the contents of the CA's certificate file to the
agentOptions
. The certificate the domain presents must be signed by the root certificate specified:request.get({ url: 'https://api.some-server.com/', agentOptions: { ca: fs.readFileSync('ca.cert.pem') } });
The
ca
value can be an array of certificates, in the event you have a private or internal corporate public-key infrastructure hierarchy. For example, if you want to connect to https://api.some-server.com which presents a key chain consisting of:- its own public key, which is signed by:
- an intermediate "Corp Issuing Server", that is in turn signed by:
- a root CA "Corp Root CA";
you can configure your request as follows:
request.get({ url: 'https://api.some-server.com/', agentOptions: { ca: [ fs.readFileSync('Corp Issuing Server.pem'), fs.readFileSync('Corp Root CA.pem') ] } });
Support for HAR 1.2
The
options.har
property will override the values:url
,method
,qs
,headers
,form
,formData
,body
,json
, as well as construct multipart data and read files from disk whenrequest.postData.params[].fileName
is present without a matchingvalue
.A validation step will check if the HAR Request format matches the latest spec (v1.2) and will skip parsing if not matching.
const request = require('request') request({ // will be ignored method: 'GET', uri: 'http://www.google.com', // HTTP Archive Request Object har: { url: 'http://www.mockbin.com/har', method: 'POST', headers: [ { name: 'content-type', value: 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' } ], postData: { mimeType: 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded', params: [ { name: 'foo', value: 'bar' }, { name: 'hello', value: 'world' } ] } } }) // a POST request will be sent to http://www.mockbin.com // with body an application/x-www-form-urlencoded body: // foo=bar&hello=world
request(options, callback)
The first argument can be either a
url
or anoptions
object. The only required option isuri
; all others are optional.uri
||url
- fully qualified uri or a parsed url object fromurl.parse()
baseUrl
- fully qualified uri string used as the base url. Most useful withrequest.defaults
, for example when you want to do many requests to the same domain. IfbaseUrl
ishttps://example.com/api/
, then requesting/end/point?test=true
will fetchhttps://example.com/api/end/point?test=true
. WhenbaseUrl
is given,uri
must also be a string.method
- http method (default:"GET"
)headers
- http headers (default:{}
)
qs
- object containing querystring values to be appended to theuri
qsParseOptions
- object containing options to pass to the qs.parse method. Alternatively pass options to the querystring.parse method using this format{sep:';', eq:':', options:{}}
qsStringifyOptions
- object containing options to pass to the qs.stringify method. Alternatively pass options to the querystring.stringify method using this format{sep:';', eq:':', options:{}}
. For example, to change the way arrays are converted to query strings using theqs
module pass thearrayFormat
option with one ofindices|brackets|repeat
useQuerystring
- if true, usequerystring
to stringify and parse querystrings, otherwise useqs
(default:false
). Set this option totrue
if you need arrays to be serialized asfoo=bar&foo=baz
instead of the defaultfoo[0]=bar&foo[1]=baz
.
body
- entity body for PATCH, POST and PUT requests. Must be aBuffer
,String
orReadStream
. Ifjson
istrue
, thenbody
must be a JSON-serializable object.form
- when passed an object or a querystring, this setsbody
to a querystring representation of value, and addsContent-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
header. When passed no options, aFormData
instance is returned (and is piped to request). See "Forms" section above.formData
- data to pass for amultipart/form-data
request. See Forms section above.multipart
- array of objects which contain their own headers andbody
attributes. Sends amultipart/related
request. See Forms section above.- Alternatively you can pass in an object
{chunked: false, data: []}
wherechunked
is used to specify whether the request is sent in chunked transfer encoding In non-chunked requests, data items with body streams are not allowed.
- Alternatively you can pass in an object
preambleCRLF
- append a newline/CRLF before the boundary of yourmultipart/form-data
request.postambleCRLF
- append a newline/CRLF at the end of the boundary of yourmultipart/form-data
request.json
- setsbody
to JSON representation of value and addsContent-type: application/json
header. Additionally, parses the response body as JSON.jsonReviver
- a reviver function that will be passed toJSON.parse()
when parsing a JSON response body.jsonReplacer
- a replacer function that will be passed toJSON.stringify()
when stringifying a JSON request body.
auth
- a hash containing valuesuser
||username
,pass
||password
, andsendImmediately
(optional). See documentation above.oauth
- options for OAuth HMAC-SHA1 signing. See documentation above.hawk
- options for Hawk signing. Thecredentials
key must contain the necessary signing info, see hawk docs for details.aws
-object
containing AWS signing information. Should have the propertieskey
,secret
, and optionallysession
(note that this only works for services that require session as part of the canonical string). Also requires the propertybucket
, unless you’re specifying yourbucket
as part of the path, or the request doesn’t use a bucket (i.e. GET Services). If you want to use AWS sign version 4 use the parametersign_version
with value4
otherwise the default is version 2. If you are using SigV4, you can also include aservice
property that specifies the service name. Note: you need tonpm install aws4
first.httpSignature
- options for the HTTP Signature Scheme using Joyent's library. ThekeyId
andkey
properties must be specified. See the docs for other options.
followRedirect
- follow HTTP 3xx responses as redirects (default:true
). This property can also be implemented as function which getsresponse
object as a single argument and should returntrue
if redirects should continue orfalse
otherwise.followAllRedirects
- follow non-GET HTTP 3xx responses as redirects (default:false
)followOriginalHttpMethod
- by default we redirect to HTTP method GET. you can enable this property to redirect to the original HTTP method (default:false
)maxRedirects
- the maximum number of redirects to follow (default:10
)removeRefererHeader
- removes the referer header when a redirect happens (default:false
). Note: if true, referer header set in the initial request is preserved during redirect chain.
encoding
- encoding to be used onsetEncoding
of response data. Ifnull
, thebody
is returned as aBuffer
. Anything else (including the default value ofundefined
) will be passed as the encoding parameter totoString()
(meaning this is effectivelyutf8
by default). (Note: if you expect binary data, you should setencoding: null
.)gzip
- iftrue
, add anAccept-Encoding
header to request compressed content encodings from the server (if not already present) and decode supported content encodings in the response. Note: Automatic decoding of the response content is performed on the body data returned throughrequest
(both through therequest
stream and passed to the callback function) but is not performed on theresponse
stream (available from theresponse
event) which is the unmodifiedhttp.IncomingMessage
object which may contain compressed data. See example below.jar
- iftrue
, remember cookies for future use (or define your custom cookie jar; see examples section)
agent
-http(s).Agent
instance to useagentClass
- alternatively specify your agent's class nameagentOptions
- and pass its options. Note: for HTTPS see tls API doc for TLS/SSL options and the documentation above.forever
- set totrue
to use the forever-agent Note: Defaults tohttp(s).Agent({keepAlive:true})
in node 0.12+pool
- an object describing which agents to use for the request. If this option is omitted the request will use the global agent (as long as your options allow for it). Otherwise, request will search the pool for your custom agent. If no custom agent is found, a new agent will be created and added to the pool. Note:pool
is used only when theagent
option is not specified.- A
maxSockets
property can also be provided on thepool
object to set the max number of sockets for all agents created (ex:pool: {maxSockets: Infinity}
). - Note that if you are sending multiple requests in a loop and creating
multiple new
pool
objects,maxSockets
will not work as intended. To work around this, either userequest.defaults
with your pool options or create the pool object with themaxSockets
property outside of the loop.
- A
timeout
- integer containing number of milliseconds, controls two timeouts.- Read timeout: Time to wait for a server to send response headers (and start the response body) before aborting the request.
- Connection timeout: Sets the socket to timeout after
timeout
milliseconds of inactivity. Note that increasing the timeout beyond the OS-wide TCP connection timeout will not have any effect (the default in Linux can be anywhere from 20-120 seconds)
localAddress
- local interface to bind for network connections.proxy
- an HTTP proxy to be used. Supports proxy Auth with Basic Auth, identical to support for theurl
parameter (by embedding the auth info in theuri
)strictSSL
- iftrue
, requires SSL certificates be valid. Note: to use your own certificate authority, you need to specify an agent that was created with that CA as an option.tunnel
- controls the behavior of HTTPCONNECT
tunneling as follows:undefined
(default) -true
if the destination ishttps
,false
otherwisetrue
- always tunnel to the destination by making aCONNECT
request to the proxyfalse
- request the destination as aGET
request.
proxyHeaderWhiteList
- a whitelist of headers to send to a tunneling proxy.proxyHeaderExclusiveList
- a whitelist of headers to send exclusively to a tunneling proxy and not to destination.
time
- iftrue
, the request-response cycle (including all redirects) is timed at millisecond resolution. When set, the following properties are added to the response object:elapsedTime
Duration of the entire request/response in milliseconds (deprecated).responseStartTime
Timestamp when the response began (in Unix Epoch milliseconds) (deprecated).timingStart
Timestamp of the start of the request (in Unix Epoch milliseconds).timings
Contains event timestamps in millisecond resolution relative totimingStart
. If there were redirects, the properties reflect the timings of the final request in the redirect chain:socket
Relative timestamp when thehttp
module'ssocket
event fires. This happens when the socket is assigned to the request.lookup
Relative timestamp when thenet
module'slookup
event fires. This happens when the DNS has been resolved.connect
: Relative timestamp when thenet
module'sconnect
event fires. This happens when the server acknowledges the TCP connection.response
: Relative timestamp when thehttp
module'sresponse
event fires. This happens when the first bytes are received from the server.end
: Relative timestamp when the last bytes of the response are received.
timingPhases
Contains the durations of each request phase. If there were redirects, the properties reflect the timings of the final request in the redirect chain:wait
: Duration of socket initialization (timings.socket
)dns
: Duration of DNS lookup (timings.lookup
-timings.socket
)tcp
: Duration of TCP connection (timings.connect
-timings.socket
)firstByte
: Duration of HTTP server response (timings.response
-timings.connect
)download
: Duration of HTTP download (timings.end
-timings.response
)total
: Duration entire HTTP round-trip (timings.end
)
har
- a HAR 1.2 Request Object, will be processed from HAR format into options overwriting matching values (see the HAR 1.2 section for details)callback
- alternatively pass the request's callback in the options object
The callback argument gets 3 arguments:
- An
error
when applicable (usually fromhttp.ClientRequest
object) - An
http.IncomingMessage
object (Response object) - The third is the
response
body (String
orBuffer
, or JSON object if thejson
option is supplied)
Convenience methods
There are also shorthand methods for different HTTP METHODs and some other conveniences.
request.defaults(options)
This method returns a wrapper around the normal request API that defaults to whatever options you pass to it.
Note:
request.defaults()
does not modify the global request API; instead, it returns a wrapper that has your default settings applied to it.Note: You can call
.defaults()
on the wrapper that is returned fromrequest.defaults
to add/override defaults that were previously defaulted.For example:
//requests using baseRequest() will set the 'x-token' header const baseRequest = request.defaults({ headers: {'x-token': 'my-token'} }) //requests using specialRequest() will include the 'x-token' header set in //baseRequest and will also include the 'special' header const specialRequest = baseRequest.defaults({ headers: {special: 'special value'} })
request.METHOD()
These HTTP method convenience functions act just like
request()
but with a default method already set for you:- request.get(): Defaults to
method: "GET"
. - request.post(): Defaults to
method: "POST"
. - request.put(): Defaults to
method: "PUT"
. - request.patch(): Defaults to
method: "PATCH"
. - request.del() / request.delete(): Defaults to
method: "DELETE"
. - request.head(): Defaults to
method: "HEAD"
. - request.options(): Defaults to
method: "OPTIONS"
.
request.cookie()
Function that creates a new cookie.
request.cookie('key1=value1')
request.jar()
Function that creates a new cookie jar.
request.jar()
response.caseless.get('header-name')
Function that returns the specified response header field using a case-insensitive match
request('http://www.google.com', function (error, response, body) { // print the Content-Type header even if the server returned it as 'content-type' (lowercase) console.log('Content-Type is:', response.caseless.get('Content-Type')); });
Debugging
There are at least three ways to debug the operation of
request
:Launch the node process like
NODE_DEBUG=request node script.js
(lib,request,otherlib
works too).Set
require('request').debug = true
at any time (this does the same thing as #1).Use the request-debug module to view request and response headers and bodies.
Timeouts
Most requests to external servers should have a timeout attached, in case the server is not responding in a timely manner. Without a timeout, your code may have a socket open/consume resources for minutes or more.
There are two main types of timeouts: connection timeouts and read timeouts. A connect timeout occurs if the timeout is hit while your client is attempting to establish a connection to a remote machine (corresponding to the connect() call on the socket). A read timeout occurs any time the server is too slow to send back a part of the response.
These two situations have widely different implications for what went wrong with the request, so it's useful to be able to distinguish them. You can detect timeout errors by checking
err.code
for an 'ETIMEDOUT' value. Further, you can detect whether the timeout was a connection timeout by checking if theerr.connect
property is set totrue
.request.get('http://10.255.255.1', {timeout: 1500}, function(err) { console.log(err.code === 'ETIMEDOUT'); // Set to `true` if the timeout was a connection timeout, `false` or // `undefined` otherwise. console.log(err.connect === true); process.exit(0); });
Examples:
const request = require('request') , rand = Math.floor(Math.random()*100000000).toString() ; request( { method: 'PUT' , uri: 'http://mikeal.iriscouch.com/testjs/' + rand , multipart: [ { 'content-type': 'application/json' , body: JSON.stringify({foo: 'bar', _attachments: {'message.txt': {follows: true, length: 18, 'content_type': 'text/plain' }}}) } , { body: 'I am an attachment' } ] } , function (error, response, body) { if(response.statusCode == 201){ console.log('document saved as: http://mikeal.iriscouch.com/testjs/'+ rand) } else { console.log('error: '+ response.statusCode) console.log(body) } } )
For backwards-compatibility, response compression is not supported by default. To accept gzip-compressed responses, set the
gzip
option totrue
. Note that the body data passed throughrequest
is automatically decompressed while the response object is unmodified and will contain compressed data if the server sent a compressed response.const request = require('request') request( { method: 'GET' , uri: 'http://www.google.com' , gzip: true } , function (error, response, body) { // body is the decompressed response body console.log('server encoded the data as: ' + (response.headers['content-encoding'] || 'identity')) console.log('the decoded data is: ' + body) } ) .on('data', function(data) { // decompressed data as it is received console.log('decoded chunk: ' + data) }) .on('response', function(response) { // unmodified http.IncomingMessage object response.on('data', function(data) { // compressed data as it is received console.log('received ' + data.length + ' bytes of compressed data') }) })
Cookies are disabled by default (else, they would be used in subsequent requests). To enable cookies, set
jar
totrue
(either indefaults
oroptions
).const request = request.defaults({jar: true}) request('http://www.google.com', function () { request('http://images.google.com') })
To use a custom cookie jar (instead of
request
’s global cookie jar), setjar
to an instance ofrequest.jar()
(either indefaults
oroptions
)const j = request.jar() const request = request.defaults({jar:j}) request('http://www.google.com', function () { request('http://images.google.com') })
OR
const j = request.jar(); const cookie = request.cookie('key1=value1'); const url = 'http://www.google.com'; j.setCookie(cookie, url); request({url: url, jar: j}, function () { request('http://images.google.com') })
To use a custom cookie store (such as a
FileCookieStore
which supports saving to and restoring from JSON files), pass it as a parameter torequest.jar()
:const FileCookieStore = require('tough-cookie-filestore'); // NOTE - currently the 'cookies.json' file must already exist! const j = request.jar(new FileCookieStore('cookies.json')); request = request.defaults({ jar : j }) request('http://www.google.com', function() { request('http://images.google.com') })
The cookie store must be a
tough-cookie
store and it must support synchronous operations; see theCookieStore
API docs for details.To inspect your cookie jar after a request:
const j = request.jar() request({url: 'http://www.google.com', jar: j}, function () { const cookie_string = j.getCookieString(url); // "key1=value1; key2=value2; ..." const cookies = j.getCookies(url); // [{key: 'key1', value: 'value1', domain: "www.google.com", ...}, ...] })