accepts

What is accepts?

The 'accepts' npm package is a utility for content negotiation in Node.js. It allows a server to interpret the content types that a client can handle and respond with the most appropriate content type. It is commonly used in HTTP server frameworks like Express to simplify the process of determining what MIME types the client accepts in the 'Accept' HTTP header.

What are accepts's main functionalities?

Content Type Negotiation

This code demonstrates how to use the 'accepts' package to determine the best response content type based on the client's 'Accept' header. The server responds with either JSON, HTML, or plain text.

const accepts = require('accepts');
const http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  var accept = accepts(req);
  var preferredType = accept.type(['json', 'html']);
  if (preferredType === 'json') {
    res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json');
    res.end(JSON.stringify({ message: 'Hello, JSON!' }));
  } else if (preferredType === 'html') {
    res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/html');
    res.end('<p>Hello, HTML!</p>');
  } else {
    res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
    res.end('Hello, plain text!');
  }
}).listen(3000);

Language Negotiation

This code snippet shows how to use the 'accepts' package to determine the client's preferred language from the 'Accept-Language' header and respond accordingly.

const accepts = require('accepts');
const http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  var accept = accepts(req);
  var preferredLanguage = accept.language(['en', 'es', 'fr']);
  res.end('Preferred language: ' + preferredLanguage);
}).listen(3000);

Encoding Negotiation

This example illustrates how to use the 'accepts' package to negotiate the content encoding that the client supports, such as 'gzip' or 'deflate'.

const accepts = require('accepts');
const http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  var accept = accepts(req);
  var preferredEncoding = accept.encoding(['gzip', 'deflate']);
  res.end('Preferred encoding: ' + preferredEncoding);
}).listen(3000);

Charset Negotiation

This code sample demonstrates how to use the 'accepts' package to determine which charset the client prefers, such as 'utf-8' or 'iso-8859-1'.

const accepts = require('accepts');
const http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  var accept = accepts(req);
  var preferredCharset = accept.charset(['utf-8', 'iso-8859-1']);
  res.end('Preferred charset: ' + preferredCharset);
}).listen(3000);

Other packages similar to accepts

negotiator

The 'negotiator' package is similar to 'accepts' and provides an HTTP content negotiation algorithm that is compliant with RFC 7231. It offers more detailed control over the negotiation process compared to 'accepts', but it might be more complex to use for simple scenarios.

negotiate

The 'negotiate' package is another alternative for content negotiation in Node.js. It is designed to be a simple and lightweight solution, but it may not be as feature-rich or widely used as 'accepts'.

README

accepts

Higher level content negotation based on negotiator. Extracted from koa for general use.

In addition to negotatior, it allows:

• Allows types as an array or arguments list, ie (['text/html', 'application/json']) as well as ('text/html', 'application/json').
• Allows type shorthands such as json.
• Returns false when no types match
• Treats non-existent headers as *

API

var accept = new Accepts(req)

var accepts = require('accepts')

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  var accept = accepts(req)
})

accept[property]()

Returns all the explicitly accepted content property as an array in descending priority.

• accept.types()
• accept.encodings()
• accept.charsets()
• accept.languages()

They are also aliased in singular form such as accept.type(). accept.languages() is also aliased as accept.langs(), etc.

Note: you should almost never do this in a real app as it defeats the purpose of content negotiation.

Example:

// in Google Chrome
var encodings = accept.encodings() // -> ['sdch', 'gzip', 'deflate']

Since you probably don't support sdch, you should just supply the encodings you support:

var encoding = accept.encodings('gzip', 'deflate') // -> 'gzip', probably

accept[property](values, ...)

You can either have values be an array or have an argument list of values.

If the client does not accept any values, false will be returned. If the client accepts any values, the preferred value will be return.

For accept.types(), shorthand mime types are allowed.

Example:

// req.headers.accept = 'application/json'

accept.types('json') // -> 'json'
accept.types('html', 'json') // -> 'json'
accept.types('html') // -> false

// req.headers.accept = ''
// which is equivalent to `*`

accept.types() // -> [], no explicit types
accept.types('text/html', 'text/json') // -> 'text/html', since it was first

License

MIT