jsonist

jsonist

JSON over HTTP: A simple wrapper around hyperquest for dealing with JSON web APIs.

A simple GET:

var url  = 'https://api.github.com/users/rvagg'
  , opts = { headers: { 'user-agent': 'yee haw grandma' } }
  , fn   = function (err, data, resp) {
      console.log(data)
    }

jsonist.get(url, opts, fn)

// → { login: 'rvagg',
//     id: 495647,
//   ...
//   }

or a POST:

var url  = 'https://api.github.com/repos/rvagg/jsonist/issues'
  , opts = {
        headers : { 'user-agent': 'yee haw grandma' }
      , auth    : 'rvagg:24d5dee258c64aef38a66c0c5eca459c379901c2'
    }
  , data = {
        'title' : 'Not a bug'
      , 'body'  : 'Just guinea-pigging your repo dude, move along.'
    }
  , fn   = function (err, data, resp) {
      console.log(data)
    }

jsonist.post(url, data, opts, fn)

// → { url: 'https://api.github.com/repos/rvagg/jsonist/issues/1',
//   ...
//   }

// you can also jsonist.put(), the kids love PUT requests these days

API

jsonist.get(url, [ options, ] callback)

Send a GET request to url and return the callback with an error or JSON deserialised data.

The options object is optional and is passed on to hyperquest. One option is observed by jsonist:

• followRedirects (default false): if truthy, jsonist will follow HTTP redirects to new locations, up to a maximum of 10 times. Set followRedirects to an integer to change the maximum number of redirects to follow.

The callback is called with up to 3 arguments. If there is an error there will only be an error argument in the first position, otherwise it will be null. The second argument will contain the deserialised object obtained from the server and the third argument will be the response object itself if you need to fetch headers or other metadata.

jsonist.post(url, data, [ options, ] callback)

Send a POST request to url, writing JSON serialised data to the request, and return the callback with an error or JSON deserialised data (if any).

'method' is set to 'POST' for you before passing on to hyperquest.

The data parameter can also be a readable stream that will get .pipe()'d to the request.

The options object is optional and is passed on to hyperquest.

jsonist.put(url, data, [ options, ] callback)

Same as jsonist.post() but for when that extra character is too much to type or you have to use someone's overloaded API. 'method' is set to 'PUT'.

Note: in each of the requests you can provide an optional 'hyperquest' parameter in your options if you want to really customise the http chain (see this)

jsonist.delete(url, [ options, ] callback)

Send a DELETE request to url and return the callback with an error or JSON deserialised data.

Otherwise works the same as GET.

Error handling and bad JSON responses

Server errors (i.e. response codes >= 300) are handled as standard responses. You can get the status code from the response object which is the third argument to the standard callback if you need to handle error responses in a different way.

However, if any type of response returns data that is not JSON format, an error will be generated and passed as the first argument on the callback, with the following customisations:

• If the status code from the server is >= 300, you will receive an error of type jsonist.HttpError, otherwise it will be of type SyntaxError indicating a bad JSON parse on a normal response.
• The error will come with the following additional properties attached:
  • data: a Buffer containing the full response from the server
  • response: the full HTTP response object
  • statusCode: the status code received from the server (a short-cut to response.statusCode)

License

jsonist is Copyright (c) 2014 Rod Vagg @rvagg and licensed under the MIT licence. All rights not explicitly granted in the MIT license are reserved. See the included LICENSE file for more details.