got

What is got?

The 'got' npm package is a human-friendly and powerful HTTP request library for Node.js. It provides an easy-to-use API for making HTTP requests and supports many features like streams, pagination, JSON parsing, and more.

What are got's main functionalities?

Simplified HTTP requests

This feature allows you to perform HTTP GET requests with a promise-based API. The example shows how to fetch a webpage and log the HTML content.

const got = require('got');
got('https://sindresorhus.com').then(response => {
  console.log(response.body);
}).catch(error => {
  console.log(error.response.body);
});

JSON support

This feature automatically parses JSON responses. The example demonstrates fetching JSON data from an API and logging the parsed object.

const got = require('got');
got('https://api.example.com/data', { responseType: 'json' }).then(response => {
  console.log(response.body);
}).catch(error => {
  console.log(error.response.body);
});

POST requests

This feature allows you to send POST requests with JSON bodies. The example shows how to send a POST request with a JSON payload and receive a JSON response.

const got = require('got');
got.post('https://api.example.com/submit', {
  json: {
    key: 'value'
  },
  responseType: 'json'
}).then(response => {
  console.log(response.body);
}).catch(error => {
  console.log(error.response.body);
});

Error handling

This feature provides comprehensive error handling for various types of request failures. The example demonstrates how to handle different error scenarios when a request fails.

const got = require('got');
got('https://api.example.com/wrong-endpoint').then(response => {
  console.log(response.body);
}).catch(error => {
  if (error.response) {
    console.log('The server responded with a non-2xx status code.');
  } else if (error.request) {
    console.log('The request was made but no response was received');
  } else {
    console.log('An error occurred when trying to perform the request.');
  }
});

Stream support

This feature allows you to use got as a stream. The example shows how to stream a webpage's content and write it to a file.

const got = require('got');
const fs = require('fs');
const stream = got.stream('https://sindresorhus.com');
stream.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('index.html'));

Other packages similar to got

axios

Axios is a promise-based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. It provides an API similar to got but also works in the browser. Axios has interceptors that allow you to transform requests and responses before they are handled by then or catch.

request

Request is a simplified HTTP request client that was very popular but is now deprecated. It had a callback-based API but also supported promises. Got is considered a modern alternative to Request with promise support by default.

node-fetch

Node-fetch is a light-weight module that brings the Fetch API to Node.js. It is a minimalistic and straightforward API that resembles the Fetch API provided by modern browsers, making it familiar to front-end developers.

superagent

Superagent is a small progressive client-side HTTP request library. It has a fluent API that allows chaining methods to configure requests, and it can be used on both server and client side. Compared to got, it has a more object-oriented style.

README

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Human-friendly and powerful HTTP request library for Node.js

See how Got compares to other HTTP libraries

---

For browser usage, we recommend Ky by the same people.

---

Support questions should be asked here.

Install

$ npm install got

Take a peek

JSON mode

Got has a dedicated option for handling JSON payload.
Furthermore, the promise exposes a .json<T>() function that returns Promise<T>.

import got from 'got';

const {data} = await got.post('https://httpbin.org/anything', {
	json: {
		hello: 'world'
	}
}).json();

console.log(data);
//=> {"hello": "world"}

For advanced JSON usage, check out the parseJson and stringifyJson options.

For more useful tips like this, visit the Tips page.

Highlights

• Used by 6K+ packages and 3M+ repos
• Actively maintained
• Trusted by many companies

Documentation

Main API

• Promise API
• Options
• Stream API
• Pagination API
• Advanced HTTPS API
• HTTP/2 support
• Response class

Timeouts and retries

• Advanced timeout handling
• Retries on failure
• Errors with metadata

Advanced creation

• Hooks
• Instances
• Progress events & other events
• Plugins
• Compose

Cache, Proxy and UNIX sockets

• RFC compliant caching
• Proxy support
• Unix Domain Sockets

Integration

• TypeScript support
• AWS
• Testing

---

Migration guides

• Request migration guide
  • (Note that Request is unmaintained)
• Axios
• Node.js

Got plugins

• got4aws - Got convenience wrapper to interact with AWS v4 signed APIs
• gh-got - Got convenience wrapper to interact with the GitHub API
• gl-got - Got convenience wrapper to interact with the GitLab API
• gotql - Got convenience wrapper to interact with GraphQL using JSON-parsed queries instead of strings
• got-fetch - Got with a fetch interface
• got-scraping - Got wrapper specifically designed for web scraping purposes
• got-ssrf - Got wrapper to protect server-side requests against SSRF attacks

Legacy

• travis-got - Got convenience wrapper to interact with the Travis API
• graphql-got - Got convenience wrapper to interact with GraphQL

Comparison

	got	request	node-fetch	ky	axios	superagent
HTTP/2 support	:heavy_check_mark:¹	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:**
Browser support	:x:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:*	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:
Promise API	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:
Stream API	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	Node.js only	:x:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:
Pagination API	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:
Request cancelation	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:
RFC compliant caching	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:
Cookies (out-of-box)	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:
Follows redirects	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:
Retries on failure	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:
Progress events	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:***	Browser only	:heavy_check_mark:
Handles gzip/deflate	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:
Advanced timeouts	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:
Timings	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:
Errors with metadata	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:
JSON mode	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:
Custom defaults	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:
Composable	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:
Hooks	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:	:x:	:heavy_check_mark:	:heavy_check_mark:	:x:
Issues open
Issues closed
Downloads
Coverage	TBD
Build
Bugs
Dependents
Install size
GitHub stars
TypeScript support
Last commit

* It's almost API compatible with the browser fetch API.
** Need to switch the protocol manually. Doesn't accept PUSH streams and doesn't reuse HTTP/2 sessions.
*** Currently, only DownloadProgress event is supported, UploadProgress event is not supported.
¹ Requires Node.js 15.10.0 or above.
:sparkle: Almost-stable feature, but the API may change. Don't hesitate to try it out!
:grey_question: Feature in early stage of development. Very experimental.

Click here to see the install size of the Got dependencies.

Maintainers

Sindre Sorhus	Szymon Marczak

Former

• Vsevolod Strukchinsky
• Alexander Tesfamichael
• Brandon Smith
• Luke Childs
• Giovanni Minotti

These amazing companies are using Got

Segment is a happy user of Got! Got powers the main backend API that our app talks to. It's used by our in-house RPC client that we use to communicate with all microservices.

— Vadim Demedes

Antora, a static site generator for creating documentation sites, uses Got to download the UI bundle. In Antora, the UI bundle (aka theme) is maintained as a separate project. That project exports the UI as a zip file we call the UI bundle. The main site generator downloads that UI from a URL using Got and streams it to vinyl-zip to extract the files. Those files go on to be used to create the HTML pages and supporting assets.

— Dan Allen

GetVoIP is happily using Got in production. One of the unique capabilities of Got is the ability to handle Unix sockets which enables us to build a full control interfaces for our docker stack.

— Daniel Kalen

We're using Got inside of Exoframe to handle all the communication between CLI and server. Exoframe is a self-hosted tool that allows simple one-command deployments using Docker.

— Tim Ermilov

Karaoke Mugen uses Got to fetch content updates from its online server.

— Axel Terizaki

Renovate uses Got, gh-got and gl-got to send millions of queries per day to GitHub, GitLab, npmjs, PyPi, Packagist, Docker Hub, Terraform, CircleCI, and more.

— Rhys Arkins

Resistbot uses Got to communicate from the API frontend where all correspondence ingresses to the officials lookup database in back.

— Chris Erickson

Natural Cycles is using Got to communicate with all kinds of 3rd-party REST APIs (over 9000!).

— Kirill Groshkov

Microlink is a cloud browser as an API service that uses Got widely as the main HTTP client, serving ~22M requests a month, every time a network call needs to be performed.

— Kiko Beats

We’re using Got at Radity. Thanks for such an amazing work!

— Mirzayev Farid

Got has been a crucial component of Apify's scraping for years. We use it to extract data from billions of web pages every month, and we really appreciate the powerful API and extensibility, which allowed us to build our own specialized HTTP client on top of Got. The support has always been stellar too.

— Ondra Urban

For enterprise

Available as part of the Tidelift Subscription.

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