Request - Simplified HTTP client
This is a fork of the excellent request
module, which is used inside Postman Runtime. It contains a few bugfixes that are not fixed in request
:
Super simple to use
Request is designed to be the simplest way possible to make http calls. It supports HTTPS and follows redirects by default.
const request = require('postman-request');
request('http://www.google.com', function (error, response, body) {
console.log('error:', error);
console.log('statusCode:', response && response.statusCode);
console.log('body:', body);
});
Table of contents
Request also offers convenience methods like
request.defaults
and request.post
, and there are
lots of usage examples and several
debugging techniques.
Streaming
You can stream any response to a file stream.
request('http://google.com/doodle.png').pipe(fs.createWriteStream('doodle.png'))
You can also stream a file to a PUT or POST request. This method will also check the file extension against a mapping of file extensions to content-types (in this case application/json
) and use the proper content-type
in the PUT request (if the headers don’t already provide one).
fs.createReadStream('file.json').pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/obj.json'))
Request can also pipe
to itself. When doing so, content-type
and content-length
are preserved in the PUT headers.
request.get('http://google.com/img.png').pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/img.png'))
Request emits a "response" event when a response is received. The response
argument will be an instance of http.IncomingMessage.
request
.get('http://google.com/img.png')
.on('response', function(response) {
console.log(response.statusCode)
console.log(response.headers['content-type'])
})
.pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/img.png'))
To easily handle errors when streaming requests, listen to the error
event before piping:
request
.get('http://mysite.com/doodle.png')
.on('error', function(err) {
console.log(err)
})
.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('doodle.png'))
Now let’s get fancy.
http.createServer(function (req, resp) {
if (req.url === '/doodle.png') {
if (req.method === 'PUT') {
req.pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/doodle.png'))
} else if (req.method === 'GET' || req.method === 'HEAD') {
request.get('http://mysite.com/doodle.png').pipe(resp)
}
}
})
You can also pipe()
from http.ServerRequest
instances, as well as to http.ServerResponse
instances. The HTTP method, headers, and entity-body data will be sent. Which means that, if you don't really care about security, you can do:
http.createServer(function (req, resp) {
if (req.url === '/doodle.png') {
const x = request('http://mysite.com/doodle.png')
req.pipe(x)
x.pipe(resp)
}
})
And since pipe()
returns the destination stream in ≥ Node 0.5.x you can do one line proxying. :)
req.pipe(request('http://mysite.com/doodle.png')).pipe(resp)
Also, none of this new functionality conflicts with requests previous features, it just expands them.
const r = request.defaults({'proxy':'http://localproxy.com'})
http.createServer(function (req, resp) {
if (req.url === '/doodle.png') {
r.get('http://google.com/doodle.png').pipe(resp)
}
})
You can still use intermediate proxies, the requests will still follow HTTP forwards, etc.
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Promises & Async/Await
request
supports both streaming and callback interfaces natively. If you'd like request
to return a Promise instead, you can use an alternative interface wrapper for request
. These wrappers can be useful if you prefer to work with Promises, or if you'd like to use async
/await
in ES2017.
Several alternative interfaces are provided by the request team, including:
Also, util.promisify
, which is available from Node.js v8.0 can be used to convert a regular function that takes a callback to return a promise instead.
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Forms
request
supports application/x-www-form-urlencoded
and multipart/form-data
form uploads. For multipart/related
refer to the multipart
API.
application/x-www-form-urlencoded (URL-Encoded Forms)
URL-encoded forms are simple.
request.post('http://service.com/upload', {form:{key:'value'}})
request.post('http://service.com/upload').form({key:'value'})
request.post({url:'http://service.com/upload', form: {key:'value'}}, function(err,httpResponse,body){ })
multipart/form-data (Multipart Form Uploads)
For multipart/form-data
we use the form-data library by @felixge. For the most cases, you can pass your upload form data via the formData
option.
const formData = {
my_field: 'my_value',
my_buffer: Buffer.from([1, 2, 3]),
my_file: fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/unicycle.jpg'),
attachments: [
fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/attachment1.jpg'),
fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/attachment2.jpg')
],
custom_file: {
value: fs.createReadStream('/dev/urandom'),
options: {
filename: 'topsecret.jpg',
contentType: 'image/jpeg'
}
}
};
request.post({url:'http://service.com/upload', formData: formData}, function optionalCallback(err, httpResponse, body) {
if (err) {
return console.error('upload failed:', err);
}
console.log('Upload successful! Server responded with:', body);
});
For advanced cases, you can access the form-data object itself via r.form()
. This can be modified until the request is fired on the next cycle of the event-loop. (Note that this calling form()
will clear the currently set form data for that request.)
const r = request.post('http://service.com/upload', function optionalCallback(err, httpResponse, body) {...})
const form = r.form();
form.append('my_field', 'my_value');
form.append('my_buffer', Buffer.from([1, 2, 3]));
form.append('custom_file', fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/unicycle.jpg'), {filename: 'unicycle.jpg'});
See the form-data README for more information & examples.
multipart/related
Some variations in different HTTP implementations require a newline/CRLF before, after, or both before and after the boundary of a multipart/related
request (using the multipart option). This has been observed in the .NET WebAPI version 4.0. You can turn on a boundary preambleCRLF or postamble by passing them as true
to your request options.
request({
method: 'PUT',
preambleCRLF: true,
postambleCRLF: true,
uri: 'http://service.com/upload',
multipart: [
{
'content-type': 'application/json',
body: JSON.stringify({foo: 'bar', _attachments: {'message.txt': {follows: true, length: 18, 'content_type': 'text/plain' }}})
},
{ body: 'I am an attachment' },
{ body: fs.createReadStream('image.png') }
],
multipart: {
chunked: false,
data: [
{
'content-type': 'application/json',
body: JSON.stringify({foo: 'bar', _attachments: {'message.txt': {follows: true, length: 18, 'content_type': 'text/plain' }}})
},
{ body: 'I am an attachment' }
]
}
},
function (error, response, body) {
if (error) {
return console.error('upload failed:', error);
}
console.log('Upload successful! Server responded with:', body);
})
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HTTP Authentication
request.get('http://some.server.com/').auth('username', 'password', false);
request.get('http://some.server.com/', {
'auth': {
'user': 'username',
'pass': 'password',
'sendImmediately': false
}
});
request.get('http://some.server.com/').auth(null, null, true, 'bearerToken');
request.get('http://some.server.com/', {
'auth': {
'bearer': 'bearerToken'
}
});
If passed as an option, auth
should be a hash containing values:
user
|| username
pass
|| password
sendImmediately
(optional)bearer
(optional)
The method form takes parameters
auth(username, password, sendImmediately, bearer)
.
sendImmediately
defaults to true
, which causes a basic or bearer
authentication header to be sent. If sendImmediately
is false
, then
request
will retry with a proper authentication header after receiving a
401
response from the server (which must contain a WWW-Authenticate
header
indicating the required authentication method).
Note that you can also specify basic authentication using the URL itself, as
detailed in RFC 1738. Simply pass the
user:password
before the host with an @
sign:
const username = 'username',
password = 'password',
url = 'http://' + username + ':' + password + '@some.server.com';
request({url}, function (error, response, body) {
});
Digest authentication is supported, but it only works with sendImmediately
set to false
; otherwise request
will send basic authentication on the
initial request, which will probably cause the request to fail.
Bearer authentication is supported, and is activated when the bearer
value is
available. The value may be either a String
or a Function
returning a
String
. Using a function to supply the bearer token is particularly useful if
used in conjunction with defaults
to allow a single function to supply the
last known token at the time of sending a request, or to compute one on the fly.
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HTTP Headers, such as User-Agent
, can be set in the options
object.
In the example below, we call the github API to find out the number
of stars and forks for the request repository. This requires a
custom User-Agent
header as well as https.
const request = require('postman-request');
const options = {
url: 'https://api.github.com/repos/request/request',
headers: {
'User-Agent': 'postman-request'
}
};
function callback(error, response, body) {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
const info = JSON.parse(body);
console.log(info.stargazers_count + " Stars");
console.log(info.forks_count + " Forks");
}
}
request(options, callback);
Use options.blacklistHeaders
option to blacklist the list of headers from requests and redirects.
var options = {
setHost: false,
blacklistHeaders: ['connection', 'content-length', 'transfer-encoding']
}
request.post('http://localhost:3000', options, function(err, res, body) {
});
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OAuth Signing
OAuth version 1.0 is supported. The
default signing algorithm is
HMAC-SHA1:
const qs = require('querystring')
, oauth =
{ callback: 'http://mysite.com/callback/'
, consumer_key: CONSUMER_KEY
, consumer_secret: CONSUMER_SECRET
}
, url = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/request_token'
;
request.post({url:url, oauth:oauth}, function (e, r, body) {
const req_data = qs.parse(body)
const uri = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authenticate'
+ '?' + qs.stringify({oauth_token: req_data.oauth_token})
const auth_data = qs.parse(body)
, oauth =
{ consumer_key: CONSUMER_KEY
, consumer_secret: CONSUMER_SECRET
, token: auth_data.oauth_token
, token_secret: req_data.oauth_token_secret
, verifier: auth_data.oauth_verifier
}
, url = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/access_token'
;
request.post({url:url, oauth:oauth}, function (e, r, body) {
const perm_data = qs.parse(body)
, oauth =
{ consumer_key: CONSUMER_KEY
, consumer_secret: CONSUMER_SECRET
, token: perm_data.oauth_token
, token_secret: perm_data.oauth_token_secret
}
, url = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/users/show.json'
, qs =
{ screen_name: perm_data.screen_name
, user_id: perm_data.user_id
}
;
request.get({url:url, oauth:oauth, qs:qs, json:true}, function (e, r, user) {
console.log(user)
})
})
})
For RSA-SHA1 signing, make
the following changes to the OAuth options object:
- Pass
signature_method : 'RSA-SHA1'
- Instead of
consumer_secret
, specify a private_key
string in
PEM format
For PLAINTEXT signing, make
the following changes to the OAuth options object:
- Pass
signature_method : 'PLAINTEXT'
To send OAuth parameters via query params or in a post body as described in The
Consumer Request Parameters
section of the oauth1 spec:
- Pass
transport_method : 'query'
or transport_method : 'body'
in the OAuth
options object. transport_method
defaults to 'header'
To use Request Body Hash you can either
- Manually generate the body hash and pass it as a string
body_hash: '...'
- Automatically generate the body hash by passing
body_hash: true
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Proxies
If you specify a proxy
option, then the request (and any subsequent
redirects) will be sent via a connection to the proxy server.
If your endpoint is an https
url, and you are using a proxy, then
request will send a CONNECT
request to the proxy server first, and
then use the supplied connection to connect to the endpoint.
That is, first it will make a request like:
HTTP/1.1 CONNECT endpoint-server.com:80
Host: proxy-server.com
User-Agent: whatever user agent you specify
and then the proxy server make a TCP connection to endpoint-server
on port 80
, and return a response that looks like:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
At this point, the connection is left open, and the client is
communicating directly with the endpoint-server.com
machine.
See the wikipedia page on HTTP Tunneling
for more information.
By default, when proxying http
traffic, request will simply make a
standard proxied http
request. This is done by making the url
section of the initial line of the request a fully qualified url to
the endpoint.
For example, it will make a single request that looks like:
HTTP/1.1 GET http://endpoint-server.com/some-url
Host: proxy-server.com
Other-Headers: all go here
request body or whatever
Because a pure "http over http" tunnel offers no additional security
or other features, it is generally simpler to go with a
straightforward HTTP proxy in this case. However, if you would like
to force a tunneling proxy, you may set the tunnel
option to true
.
You can also make a standard proxied http
request by explicitly setting
tunnel : false
, but note that this will allow the proxy to see the traffic
to/from the destination server.
If you are using a tunneling proxy, you may set the
proxyHeaderWhiteList
to share certain headers with the proxy.
You can also set the proxyHeaderExclusiveList
to share certain
headers only with the proxy and not with destination host.
By default, this set is:
accept
accept-charset
accept-encoding
accept-language
accept-ranges
cache-control
content-encoding
content-language
content-length
content-location
content-md5
content-range
content-type
connection
date
expect
max-forwards
pragma
proxy-authorization
referer
te
transfer-encoding
user-agent
via
Note that, when using a tunneling proxy, the proxy-authorization
header and any headers from custom proxyHeaderExclusiveList
are
never sent to the endpoint server, but only to the proxy server.
Controlling proxy behaviour using environment variables
The following environment variables are respected by request
:
HTTP_PROXY
/ http_proxy
HTTPS_PROXY
/ https_proxy
NO_PROXY
/ no_proxy
When HTTP_PROXY
/ http_proxy
are set, they will be used to proxy non-SSL requests that do not have an explicit proxy
configuration option present. Similarly, HTTPS_PROXY
/ https_proxy
will be respected for SSL requests that do not have an explicit proxy
configuration option. It is valid to define a proxy in one of the environment variables, but then override it for a specific request, using the proxy
configuration option. Furthermore, the proxy
configuration option can be explicitly set to false / null to opt out of proxying altogether for that request.
request
is also aware of the NO_PROXY
/no_proxy
environment variables. These variables provide a granular way to opt out of proxying, on a per-host basis. It should contain a comma separated list of hosts to opt out of proxying. It is also possible to opt of proxying when a particular destination port is used. Finally, the variable may be set to *
to opt out of the implicit proxy configuration of the other environment variables.
Here's some examples of valid no_proxy
values:
google.com
- don't proxy HTTP/HTTPS requests to Google.google.com:443
- don't proxy HTTPS requests to Google, but do proxy HTTP requests to Google.google.com:443, yahoo.com:80
- don't proxy HTTPS requests to Google, and don't proxy HTTP requests to Yahoo!*
- ignore https_proxy
/http_proxy
environment variables altogether.
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UNIX Domain Sockets
request
supports making requests to UNIX Domain Sockets. To make one, use the following URL scheme:
'http://unix:SOCKET:PATH'
request.get('http://unix:/absolute/path/to/unix.socket:/request/path')
Note: The SOCKET
path is assumed to be absolute to the root of the host file system.
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TLS/SSL Protocol
TLS/SSL Protocol options, such as cert
, key
and passphrase
, can be
set directly in options
object, in the agentOptions
property of the options
object, or even in https.globalAgent.options
. Keep in mind that, although agentOptions
allows for a slightly wider range of configurations, the recommended way is via options
object directly, as using agentOptions
or https.globalAgent.options
would not be applied in the same way in proxied environments (as data travels through a TLS connection instead of an http/https agent).
const fs = require('fs')
, path = require('path')
, certFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.crt')
, keyFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.key')
, caFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/ca.cert.pem')
, request = require('postman-request');
const options = {
url: 'https://api.some-server.com/',
cert: fs.readFileSync(certFile),
key: fs.readFileSync(keyFile),
passphrase: 'password',
ca: fs.readFileSync(caFile)
};
request.get(options);
Using options.agentOptions
In the example below, we call an API that requires client side SSL certificate
(in PEM format) with passphrase protected private key (in PEM format) and disable the SSLv3 protocol:
const fs = require('fs')
, path = require('path')
, certFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.crt')
, keyFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.key')
, request = require('postman-request');
const options = {
url: 'https://api.some-server.com/',
agentOptions: {
cert: fs.readFileSync(certFile),
key: fs.readFileSync(keyFile),
passphrase: 'password',
securityOptions: 'SSL_OP_NO_SSLv3'
}
};
request.get(options);
It is able to force using SSLv3 only by specifying secureProtocol
:
request.get({
url: 'https://api.some-server.com/',
agentOptions: {
secureProtocol: 'SSLv3_method'
}
});
It is possible to accept other certificates than those signed by generally allowed Certificate Authorities (CAs).
This can be useful, for example, when using self-signed certificates.
To require a different root certificate, you can specify the signing CA by adding the contents of the CA's certificate file to the agentOptions
.
The certificate the domain presents must be signed by the root certificate specified:
request.get({
url: 'https://api.some-server.com/',
agentOptions: {
ca: fs.readFileSync('ca.cert.pem')
}
});
The ca
value can be an array of certificates, in the event you have a private or internal corporate public-key infrastructure hierarchy. For example, if you want to connect to https://api.some-server.com which presents a key chain consisting of:
- its own public key, which is signed by:
- an intermediate "Corp Issuing Server", that is in turn signed by:
- a root CA "Corp Root CA";
you can configure your request as follows:
request.get({
url: 'https://api.some-server.com/',
agentOptions: {
ca: [
fs.readFileSync('Corp Issuing Server.pem'),
fs.readFileSync('Corp Root CA.pem')
]
}
});
NOTE: If using protocolVersion
anything other than http1
, make sure that the agent is capable of handling requests with the specified protocol version. For example, if protocolVersion
is set to http1
, the agent should be an instance of http.Agent
.
Using options.verbose
Using this option the debug object holds low level request response information like remote address, negotiated ciphers etc. Example debug object:
request({url: 'https://www.google.com', verbose: true}, function (error, response, body, debug) {
});
Extending root CAs
The root CAs can be extended using the extraCA
option. The file should consist of one or more trusted certificates in PEM format.
This is similar to NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS. But, if options.ca
is specified, those will be extended as well.
request.get({
url: 'https://api.some-server.com/',
extraCA: fs.readFileSync('Extra CA Certificates .pem')
});
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Support for HAR 1.2
The options.har
property will override the values: url
, method
, qs
, headers
, form
, formData
, body
, json
, as well as construct multipart data and read files from disk when request.postData.params[].fileName
is present without a matching value
.
A validation step will check if the HAR Request format matches the latest spec (v1.2) and will skip parsing if not matching.
const request = require('postman-request')
request({
method: 'GET',
uri: 'http://www.google.com',
har: {
url: 'http://www.mockbin.com/har',
method: 'POST',
headers: [
{
name: 'content-type',
value: 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
}
],
postData: {
mimeType: 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
params: [
{
name: 'foo',
value: 'bar'
},
{
name: 'hello',
value: 'world'
}
]
}
}
})
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request(options, callback)
The first argument can be either a url
or an options
object. The only required option is uri
; all others are optional.
uri
|| url
- fully qualified uri or a parsed url object from url.parse()
baseUrl
- fully qualified uri string used as the base url. Most useful with request.defaults
, for example when you want to do many requests to the same domain. If baseUrl
is https://example.com/api/
, then requesting /end/point?test=true
will fetch https://example.com/api/end/point?test=true
. When baseUrl
is given, uri
must also be a string.method
- http method (default: "GET"
)headers
- http headers (default: {}
)protocolVersion
- HTTP Protocol Version to use. Can be one of auto|http1|http2
(default: http1
). Is overridden to http1
when sending a http request, using proxy, or running in a browser environment.
qs
- object containing querystring values to be appended to the uri
qsParseOptions
- object containing options to pass to the qs.parse method. Alternatively pass options to the querystring.parse method using this format {sep:';', eq:':', options:{}}
qsStringifyOptions
- object containing options to pass to the qs.stringify method. Alternatively pass options to the querystring.stringify method using this format {sep:';', eq:':', options:{}}
. For example, to change the way arrays are converted to query strings using the qs
module pass the arrayFormat
option with one of indices|brackets|repeat
useQuerystring
- if true, use querystring
to stringify and parse
querystrings, otherwise use qs
(default: false
). Set this option to
true
if you need arrays to be serialized as foo=bar&foo=baz
instead of the
default foo[0]=bar&foo[1]=baz
.
body
- entity body for PATCH, POST and PUT requests. Must be a Buffer
, String
or ReadStream
. If json
is true
, then body
must be a JSON-serializable object.form
- when passed an object or a querystring, this sets body
to a querystring representation of value, and adds Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
header. When passed no options, a FormData
instance is returned (and is piped to request). See "Forms" section above.formData
- data to pass for a multipart/form-data
request. See
Forms section above.multipart
- array of objects which contain their own headers and body
attributes. Sends a multipart/related
request. See Forms section
above.
- Alternatively you can pass in an object
{chunked: false, data: []}
where
chunked
is used to specify whether the request is sent in
chunked transfer encoding
In non-chunked requests, data items with body streams are not allowed.
preambleCRLF
- append a newline/CRLF before the boundary of your multipart/form-data
request.postambleCRLF
- append a newline/CRLF at the end of the boundary of your multipart/form-data
request.json
- sets body
to JSON representation of value and adds Content-type: application/json
header. Additionally, parses the response body as JSON.jsonReviver
- a reviver function that will be passed to JSON.parse()
when parsing a JSON response body.jsonReplacer
- a replacer function that will be passed to JSON.stringify()
when stringifying a JSON request body.
auth
- a hash containing values user
|| username
, pass
|| password
, and sendImmediately
(optional). See documentation above.oauth
- options for OAuth HMAC-SHA1 signing. See documentation above.hawk
- options for Hawk signing. The credentials
key must contain the necessary signing info, see hawk docs for details.aws
- object
containing AWS signing information. Should have the properties key
, secret
, and optionally session
(note that this only works for services that require session as part of the canonical string). Also requires the property bucket
, unless you’re specifying your bucket
as part of the path, or the request doesn’t use a bucket (i.e. GET Services). If you want to use AWS sign version 4 use the parameter sign_version
with value 4
otherwise the default is version 2. If you are using SigV4, you can also include a service
property that specifies the service name. Note: you need to npm install aws4
first.httpSignature
- options for the HTTP Signature Scheme using Joyent's library. The keyId
and key
properties must be specified. See the docs for other options.
followRedirect
- follow HTTP 3xx responses as redirects (default: true
). This property can also be implemented as function which gets response
object as a single argument and should return true
if redirects should continue or false
otherwise.followAllRedirects
- follow non-GET HTTP 3xx responses as redirects (default: false
)followOriginalHttpMethod
- by default we redirect to HTTP method GET. you can enable this property to redirect to the original HTTP method (default: false
)followAuthorizationHeader
- retain authorization
header when a redirect happens to a different hostname (default: false
)maxRedirects
- the maximum number of redirects to follow (default: 10
)removeRefererHeader
- removes the referer header when a redirect happens (default: false
). Note: if true, referer header set in the initial request is preserved during redirect chain.
encoding
- encoding to be used on setEncoding
of response data. If null
, the body
is returned as a Buffer
. Anything else (including the default value of undefined
) will be passed as the encoding parameter to toString()
(meaning this is effectively utf8
by default). (Note: if you expect binary data, you should set encoding: null
.)statusMessageEncoding
- if provided, this will be passed as the encoding parameter to toString()
to convert the status message buffer. Otherwise, status message will returned as a string with encoding type latin1
. Providing a value in this option will result in force re-encoding of the status message which may not always be intended by the server - specifically in cases where server returns a status message which when encoded again with a different character encoding results in some other characters. For example: If the server intentionally responds with ð\x9F\x98\x8A
as status message but if the statusMessageEncoding option is set to utf8
, then it would get converted to '😊'.gzip
- if true
, add an Accept-Encoding
header to request compressed content encodings from the server (if not already present) and decode supported content encodings in the response. Note: Automatic decoding of the response content is performed on the body data returned through request
(both through the request
stream and passed to the callback function) but is not performed on the response
stream (available from the response
event) which is the unmodified http.IncomingMessage
object which may contain compressed data. See example below.brotli
- if true
, add an Accept-Encoding
header to request Brotli compressed content encodings from the server (if not already present).jar
- if true
, remember cookies for future use (or define your custom cookie jar; see examples section)
agent
- http(s).Agent
instance to useagentClass
- alternatively specify your agent's class nameagentOptions
- and pass its options. Note: for HTTPS see tls API doc for TLS/SSL options and the documentation above.agents
- Specify separate agent instances for HTTP and HTTPS requests. Required in case of HTTP to HTTPS redirects and vice versa. For example:
request.defaults({
agents: {
http: new http.Agent(),
https: {
agentClass: https.Agent,
agentOptions: { keepAlive: true }
}
}
})
forever
- set to true
to use the forever-agent Note: Defaults to http(s).Agent({keepAlive:true})
in node 0.12+pool
- an object describing which agents to use for the request. If this option is omitted the request will use the global agent (as long as your options allow for it). Otherwise, request will search the pool for your custom agent. If no custom agent is found, a new agent will be created and added to the pool. Note: pool
is used only when the agent
option is not specified.
- A
maxSockets
property can also be provided on the pool
object to set the max number of sockets for all agents created (ex: pool: {maxSockets: Infinity}
). - Note that if you are sending multiple requests in a loop and creating
multiple new
pool
objects, maxSockets
will not work as intended. To
work around this, either use request.defaults
with your pool options or create the pool object with the maxSockets
property outside of the loop.
timeout
- integer containing number of milliseconds, controls two timeouts
- Time to wait for a server to send response headers (and start the response body) before aborting the request.
Note that if the underlying TCP connection cannot be established,
the OS-wide TCP connection timeout will overrule the
timeout
option (the
default in Linux can be anywhere from 20-120 seconds). - Sets the socket to timeout after
timeout
milliseconds of inactivity on the socket.
maxResponseSize
- Abort request if the response size exceeds this threshold (bytes).agentIdleTimeout
- set to number of milliseconds after which the agent should be discarded for reuse
localAddress
- local interface to bind for network connections.proxy
- an HTTP proxy to be used. Supports proxy Auth with Basic Auth, identical to support for the url
parameter (by embedding the auth info in the uri
)strictSSL
- if true
, requires SSL certificates be valid. Note: to use your own certificate authority, you need to specify an agent that was created with that CA as an option.tunnel
- controls the behavior of
HTTP CONNECT
tunneling
as follows:
undefined
(default) - true
if the destination is https
, false
otherwisetrue
- always tunnel to the destination by making a CONNECT
request to
the proxyfalse
- request the destination as a GET
request.
proxyHeaderWhiteList
- a whitelist of headers to send to a
tunneling proxy.proxyHeaderExclusiveList
- a whitelist of headers to send
exclusively to a tunneling proxy and not to destination.
-
disableUrlEncoding
- if true
, it will not use postman-url-encoder to encode URL. It means that if URL is given as object, it will be used as it is without doing any encoding. But if URL is given as string, it will be encoded by Node while converting it to object.
-
urlParser
- it takes an object with two functions parse
and resolve
in it. The parse
function is used to parse the URL string into URL object and the resolve
function is used to resolve relative URLs with respect to base URL. If this option is not provided or it is provided but does not contain both (parse
and resolve
) methods, it will default to Node's url.parse()
and url.resolve()
methods.
-
time
- if true
, the request-response cycle (including all redirects) is timed at millisecond resolution. When set, the following properties are added to the response object:
elapsedTime
Duration of the entire request/response in milliseconds (deprecated).responseStartTime
Timestamp when the response began (in Unix Epoch milliseconds) (deprecated).timingStart
Timestamp of the start of the request (in Unix Epoch milliseconds).timings
Contains event timestamps in millisecond resolution relative to timingStart
. If there were redirects, the properties reflect the timings of the final request in the redirect chain:
socket
Relative timestamp when the http
module's socket
event fires. This happens when the socket is assigned to the request.lookup
Relative timestamp when the net
module's lookup
event fires. This happens when the DNS has been resolved.connect
: Relative timestamp when the net
module's connect
event fires. This happens when the server acknowledges the TCP connection.secureConnect
: Relative timestamp when the tls
module's secureconnect
event fires. This happens when the handshaking process for a new connection has successfully completed.response
: Relative timestamp when the http
module's response
event fires. This happens when the first bytes are received from the server.end
: Relative timestamp when the last bytes of the response are received.
timingPhases
Contains the durations of each request phase. If there were redirects, the properties reflect the timings of the final request in the redirect chain:
wait
: Duration of socket initialization (timings.socket
)dns
: Duration of DNS lookup (timings.lookup
- timings.socket
)tcp
: Duration of TCP connection (timings.connect
- timings.lookup
)secureHandshake
: Duration of SSL handshake (timings.secureConnect
- timings.connect
)firstByte
: Duration of HTTP server response (timings.response
- timings.connect
|timings.secureConnect
)download
: Duration of HTTP download (timings.end
- timings.response
)total
: Duration entire HTTP round-trip (timings.end
)
-
har
- a HAR 1.2 Request Object, will be processed from HAR format into options overwriting matching values (see the HAR 1.2 section for details)
-
callback
- alternatively pass the request's callback in the options object
The callback argument gets 3 arguments:
- An
error
when applicable (usually from http.ClientRequest
object) - An
http.IncomingMessage
object (Response object) - The third is the
response
body (String
or Buffer
, or JSON object if the json
option is supplied)
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Convenience methods
There are also shorthand methods for different HTTP METHODs and some other conveniences.
request.defaults(options)
This method returns a wrapper around the normal request API that defaults
to whatever options you pass to it.
Note: request.defaults()
does not modify the global request API;
instead, it returns a wrapper that has your default settings applied to it.
Note: You can call .defaults()
on the wrapper that is returned from
request.defaults
to add/override defaults that were previously defaulted.
For example:
const baseRequest = request.defaults({
headers: {'x-token': 'my-token'}
})
const specialRequest = baseRequest.defaults({
headers: {special: 'special value'}
})
request.METHOD()
These HTTP method convenience functions act just like request()
but with a default method already set for you:
- request.get(): Defaults to
method: "GET"
. - request.post(): Defaults to
method: "POST"
. - request.put(): Defaults to
method: "PUT"
. - request.patch(): Defaults to
method: "PATCH"
. - request.del() / request.delete(): Defaults to
method: "DELETE"
. - request.head(): Defaults to
method: "HEAD"
. - request.options(): Defaults to
method: "OPTIONS"
.
request.cookie()
Function that creates a new cookie.
request.cookie('key1=value1')
request.jar()
Function that creates a new cookie jar.
request.jar()
Function that returns the specified response header field using a case-insensitive match
request('http://www.google.com', function (error, response, body) {
console.log('Content-Type is:', response.caseless.get('Content-Type'));
});
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Debugging
There are at least three ways to debug the operation of request
:
-
Launch the node process like NODE_DEBUG=request node script.js
(lib,request,otherlib
works too).
-
Set require('postman-request').debug = true
at any time (this does the same thing
as #1).
-
Use the request-debug module to
view request and response headers and bodies.
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Timeouts
Most requests to external servers should have a timeout attached, in case the
server is not responding in a timely manner. Without a timeout, your code may
have a socket open/consume resources for minutes or more.
There are two main types of timeouts: connection timeouts and read
timeouts. A connect timeout occurs if the timeout is hit while your client is
attempting to establish a connection to a remote machine (corresponding to the
connect() call on the socket). A read timeout occurs any time the
server is too slow to send back a part of the response.
These two situations have widely different implications for what went wrong
with the request, so it's useful to be able to distinguish them. You can detect
timeout errors by checking err.code
for an 'ETIMEDOUT' value. Further, you
can detect whether the timeout was a connection timeout by checking if the
err.connect
property is set to true
.
request.get('http://10.255.255.1', {timeout: 1500}, function(err) {
console.log(err.code === 'ETIMEDOUT');
console.log(err.connect === true);
process.exit(0);
});
Examples:
const request = require('postman-request')
, rand = Math.floor(Math.random()*100000000).toString()
;
request(
{ method: 'PUT'
, uri: 'http://mikeal.iriscouch.com/testjs/' + rand
, multipart:
[ { 'content-type': 'application/json'
, body: JSON.stringify({foo: 'bar', _attachments: {'message.txt': {follows: true, length: 18, 'content_type': 'text/plain' }}})
}
, { body: 'I am an attachment' }
]
}
, function (error, response, body) {
if(response.statusCode == 201){
console.log('document saved as: http://mikeal.iriscouch.com/testjs/'+ rand)
} else {
console.log('error: '+ response.statusCode)
console.log(body)
}
}
)
For backwards-compatibility, response compression is not supported by default.
To accept gzip-compressed responses, set the gzip
option to true
. Note
that the body data passed through request
is automatically decompressed
while the response object is unmodified and will contain compressed data if
the server sent a compressed response.
const request = require('postman-request')
request(
{ method: 'GET'
, uri: 'http://www.google.com'
, gzip: true
}
, function (error, response, body) {
console.log('server encoded the data as: ' + (response.headers['content-encoding'] || 'identity'))
console.log('the decoded data is: ' + body)
}
)
.on('data', function(data) {
console.log('decoded chunk: ' + data)
})
.on('response', function(response) {
response.on('data', function(data) {
console.log('received ' + data.length + ' bytes of compressed data')
})
})
Cookies are disabled by default (else, they would be used in subsequent requests). To enable cookies, set jar
to true
(either in defaults
or options
).
const request = request.defaults({jar: true})
request('http://www.google.com', function () {
request('http://images.google.com')
})
To use a custom cookie jar (instead of request
’s global cookie jar), set jar
to an instance of request.jar()
(either in defaults
or options
)
const j = request.jar()
const request = request.defaults({jar:j})
request('http://www.google.com', function () {
request('http://images.google.com')
})
OR
const j = request.jar();
const cookie = request.cookie('key1=value1');
const url = 'http://www.google.com';
j.setCookie(cookie, url);
request({url: url, jar: j}, function () {
request('http://images.google.com')
})
To use a custom cookie store (such as a
FileCookieStore
which supports saving to and restoring from JSON files), pass it as a parameter
to request.jar()
:
const FileCookieStore = require('tough-cookie-filestore');
const j = request.jar(new FileCookieStore('cookies.json'));
request = request.defaults({ jar : j })
request('http://www.google.com', function() {
request('http://images.google.com')
})
The cookie store must be a
tough-cookie
store and it must support asynchronous operations; see the
CookieStore
API docs
for details.
To inspect your cookie jar after a request:
const j = request.jar()
request({url: 'http://www.google.com', jar: j}, function () {
const cookie_string = j.getCookieStringSync(url);
const cookies = j.getCookiesSync(url);
})
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