Tiny yet feature-packed HTTP client. With multipart, charset decoding and proxy support.
The needle npm package is a minimalistic HTTP client for Node.js, designed for simplicity and ease of use. It provides a straightforward interface for making HTTP requests and handling responses, supporting both callbacks and streams. It is lightweight and has built-in support for multipart form-data, which makes it suitable for file uploads and other form-related tasks.
Making HTTP GET requests
This feature allows you to perform HTTP GET requests to retrieve data from a specified URL. The callback function receives an error object and the response object, which includes the status code and the response body.
const needle = require('needle');
needle.get('https://api.example.com', (error, response) => {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200)
console.log(response.body);
});Making HTTP POST requests
This feature is used to send HTTP POST requests with data to a specified URL. The data can be an object, which needle will automatically encode as application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data, depending on the content.
const needle = require('needle');
const data = { foo: 'bar' };
needle.post('https://api.example.com', data, (error, response) => {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200)
console.log(response.body);
});Streaming support
Needle supports streaming, which allows you to pipe the response stream to another stream, such as a file write stream. This is useful for handling large amounts of data or streaming file downloads.
const needle = require('needle');
const fs = require('fs');
const stream = needle.get('https://api.example.com/stream');
stream.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('output.txt'));Handling multipart form-data
Needle can handle multipart form-data, which is often used for file uploads. The data object can include file buffers, streams, or paths, and needle will handle the multipart encoding for you.
const needle = require('needle');
const data = {
file: { file: 'path/to/file.jpg', content_type: 'image/jpeg' },
other_field: 'value'
};
needle.post('https://api.example.com/upload', data, { multipart: true }, (error, response) => {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200)
console.log('Upload successful');
});Axios is a promise-based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. It provides a rich set of features like interceptors, automatic JSON data transformation, and cancellation. Compared to needle, axios is more feature-rich and has a larger footprint.
Request is a simplified HTTP request client that offers a wide range of features including OAuth signing, form uploads, and cookies. It is more complex and heavier than needle but has been deprecated as of 2020.
Got is a human-friendly and powerful HTTP request library for Node.js. It supports promises and async/await, streams, retries, and more. Got is more comprehensive than needle and is designed to be a more modern alternative with a focus on simplicity and composability.
Node-fetch is a light-weight module that brings the Fetch API to Node.js. It is a minimal and straightforward API that closely mirrors the browser's fetch API. Compared to needle, node-fetch is more aligned with web standards.
Superagent is a small progressive client-side HTTP request library, and Node.js module with the same API, sporting many high-level HTTP client features. It is more expressive than needle and includes features like a fluent API, chaining, and more.
The leanest and most handsome HTTP client in the Nodelands. With only two dependencies, it supports:
Ideal for performing simple, quick HTTP requests in Node.js. If you need OAuth, AWS support or anything fancier, you should check out mikeal's request module.
npm install needle
var needle = require('needle');
needle.get('http://www.google.com', function(error, response, body){
console.log("Got status code: " + response.statusCode);
});
needle.get(url, [options], callback);
needle.head(url, [options], callback);
needle.post(url, data, [options], callback);
needle.put(url, data, [options], callback);
needle.delete(url, data, [options], callback);
// and a generic one
needle.request(method, url, data, [options], callback);
Callback receives (error, response, body). Needle returns the response stream, which means you can pipe it to your heart's content.
needle.get('google.com/images/logo.png').pipe(fs.createWriteStream('logo.png'));
For more examples, scroll down exactly seven turns of your mousewheel. Perhaps eight.
timeout : Returns error if no response received in X milisecs. Defaults to 10000 (10 secs). 0 means no timeout.follow : Number of redirects to follow. false means don't follow any (default), true means 10.multipart : Enables multipart/form-data encoding. Defaults to false.proxy : Forwards request through HTTP(s) proxy. Eg. proxy: 'http://proxy.server.com:3128'agent : Uses an http.Agent of your choice, instead of the global (default) one.headers : Object containing custom HTTP headers for request. Overrides defaults described below.auth : Determines what to do with provided username/password. Options are auto, digest or basic (default).json : When true, sets content type to application/json and sends request body as JSON string, instead of a query string.decode : Whether to decode response to UTF-8 if Content-Type charset is different. Defaults to true.parse : Whether to parse XML or JSON response bodies automagically. Defaults to true.output : Dump response output to file. When response is text, this occurs after parsing/decoding is done.Note: To stay light on dependencies, Needle doesn't include the xml2js module used for XML parsing. To enable it, simply do npm install xml2js.
These are basically shortcuts to the headers option described above.
compressed: If true, sets 'Accept-Encoding' header to 'gzip,deflate', and inflates content if zipped. Defaults to false.username : For HTTP basic auth.password : For HTTP basic auth. Requires username to be passed, obviously.accept : Sets 'Accept' HTTP header. Defaults to */*.connection: Sets 'Connection' HTTP header. Defaults to close.user_agent: Sets the 'User-Agent' HTTP header. Defaults to Needle/{version} (Node.js {node_version}).These options are passed directly to https.request if present. Taken from the original documentation:
pfx: Certificate, Private key and CA certificates to use for SSL.key: Private key to use for SSL.passphrase: A string of passphrase for the private key or pfx.cert: Public x509 certificate to use.ca: An authority certificate or array of authority certificates to check the remote host against.ciphers: A string describing the ciphers to use or exclude.rejectUnauthorized: If true, the server certificate is verified against the list of supplied CAs. An 'error' event is emitted if verification fails. Verification happens at the connection level, before the HTTP request is sent.secureProtocol: The SSL method to use, e.g. SSLv3_method to force SSL version 3.needle.get('http://www.google.com/search?q=syd+barrett', function(err, resp, body){
if (!err && resp.statusCode == 200)
console.log(body); // prints HTML
});
needle.get('https://api.server.com', { username: 'you', password: 'secret' },
function(err, resp, body){
// used HTTP auth
});
needle.get('other.server.com', { username: 'you', password: 'secret', auth: 'digest' },
// needle prepends 'http://' to your URL, if missing
});
var options = {
compressed : true, // request a deflated response
parse : true, // parse JSON
headers : {
'X-Custom-Header': "Bumbaway atuna"
}
}
needle.get('http://server.com/posts.json', options, function(err, resp, body){
// body will contain a JSON.parse(d) object
// if parsing fails, you'll simply get the original body
});
needle.get('https://news.ycombinator.com/rss', function(err, resp, body){
// if xml2js is installed, you'll get a nice object containing the nodes in the RSS
});
needle.get('http://upload.server.com/tux.png', { output: '/tmp/tux.png' }, function(err, resp, body){
// you can dump any response to a file, not only binaries.
});
needle.get('http://search.npmjs.org', { proxy: 'http://localhost:1234' }, function(err, resp, body){
// request passed through proxy
});
needle.post('https://my.app.com/endpoint', 'foo=bar', function(err, resp, body){
// you can pass params as a string or as an object
});
var nested = {
params: {
are: {
also: 'supported'
}
}
}
needle.put('https://api.app.com/v2', nested, function(err, resp, body){
// if you don't pass any data, needle will throw an exception.
});
var data = {
foo: 'bar',
image: { file: '/home/tomas/linux.png', content_type: 'image/png' }
}
needle.post('http://my.other.app.com', data, { multipart: true }, function(err, resp, body){
// needle will read the file and include it in the form-data as binary
});
var buffer = fs.readFileSync('/path/to/package.zip');
var data = {
zip_file: {
buffer : buffer,
filename : 'mypackage.zip',
content_type : 'application/octet-stream'
},
}
needle.post('http://somewhere.com/over/the/rainbow', data, { multipart: true }, function(err, resp, body){
// if you see, when using buffers we need to pass the filename for the multipart body.
// you can also pass a filename when using the file path method, in case you want to override
// the default filename to be received on the other end.
});
var data = {
token: 'verysecret',
payload: {
value: JSON.stringify({ title: 'test', version: 1 }),
content_type: 'application/json'
}
}
needle.post('http://test.com/', data, { timeout: 5000, multipart: true }, function(err, resp, body){
// in this case, if the request takes more than 5 seconds
// the callback will return a [Socket closed] error
});
Written by Tomás Pollak, with the help of contributors.
(c) 2013 Fork Ltd. Licensed under the MIT license.
FAQs
The leanest and most handsome HTTP client in the Nodelands.
The npm package needle receives a total of 7,288,270 weekly downloads. As such, needle popularity was classified as popular.
We found that needle demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
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