flowhttp

flowHttp

Treat node.js http(s) as a simple duplex stream

Install

npm install flowhttp

Usage

Get the flowHttp module:

var flowHttp = require('flowhttp');

The flowHttp module exposes 4 basic functions, each corresponding to the standard HTTP REST verbs:

• flowHttp.get(options): Perform a GET request
• flowHttp.post(options): Perform a POST request
• flowHttp.put(options): Perform a PUT request
• flowHttp.del(options): Perform a DELETE request
• flowHttp(options): An alias for the flowHttp.get(options) function

The options argument is identical to the first argument of the http.request() method in core, but basically options can be an object or a string. If options is a string, it is automatically parsed with url.parse(). For details see the http.request() documentation.

FlowHttp handles both HTTP and HTTPS transparently.

Request & response

Each of the 4 basic functions available on the flowHttp module returns a duplex stream. This makes it very easy to read data from any request and optionally write data to a POST or PUT request.

var stream = flowHttp('http://example.com');

Events

• response: function (response) {} - Get access to the raw http.IncomingMessage reponse object. This is emitted before any data or end event. You would normally not need to listen for this event unless you need to acceess the response headers or status code
• data: function (chunk) {} - Emitted for each chunk of the reponse body
• end: function () {} - Emitted when the entire reponse have been received
• error: function (err) {} - If an error occurs during the request/reponse cycle, you will get notified here

API

Besides the normal methods avaliable on a duplex stream, the following API from http.ClientRequest have been made available:

• .setHeader(name, value)
• .getHeader(name)
• .removeHeader(name)

Examples

A dead simple GET request piped to STDOUT:

flowHttp('http://example.com').pipe(process.stdout);

Same as above by listening to the emitted events:

var body = '';
var req = flowHttp('http://example.com')
  .on('response', function (res) {
    if (res.headers['some-header'] !== 'some-expected-value')
      req.abort(); // terminate the request
  })
  .on('data', function (chunk) {
    body += chunk;
  })
  .on('end', function () {
    // output the body returned from the GET example.com reqeust
    console.log(body);
  });

Upload a picture by piping it through a simple POST request and outputting the response to STDOUT:

fs.createReadableStream('./picture.jpg')
  .pipe(flowHttp.post('http://example.com'))
  .pipe(process.stdout);

POST data to the remote server and pipe the response to STDOUT:

var req = flowHttp.put('http://example.com');
req.pipe(process.stdout);
req.write('data to be sent to the server');
red.end(); // call end to send the request

License

MIT