sync-request-curl

sync-request-curl

Make synchronous web requests similar to sync-request, but 20 times more quickly.

Leverages node-libcurl for performance as opposed to spawning child processes like sync-request.

This library cannot be used in a browser.

• 1. Installation
• 2. Usage
  • 2.1. Method
  • 2.2. URL
  • 2.3. Options
  • 2.4. Response
• 3. License
• 4. Caveats

1. Installation

npm install sync-request-curl

2. Usage

request(method, url, options);

e.g.

import request from 'sync-request-curl';

const response = request(
  'GET',
  'https://comp1531forum.alwaysdata.net/echo/echo',
  {
    qs: { message: 'Hello, world!' }
  }
);

console.log(response.statusCode)
console.log(response.body.toString());

See sync-request for the original documentation.

Please note that this library only supports a subset of the original features, which are summarised below.

2.1. Method

HTTP method (of type HttpVerb)

e.g. PUT/POST/GET/DELETE.

2.2. URL

URL as a string.

e.g. https://toohak.fly.dev

2.3. Options

Only the following subset of options are supported for the time being:

• qs - an object containing query string values to be appended to the URL, e.g. { message: 'Hello, world!' }
• headers - HTTP headers, e.g. { token: 'abcdefg' }
• body - body for POST and PUT requests, e.g. JSON.stringify({ email: '[e-mail]', password: 'comp1531' })
• json - sets body as JSON representation of value and adds Content-type: application/json to the headers.
• timeout - times out if no response is returned within the given number of milliseconds, e.g. 2000.

In src/types.ts, the following is defined:

export interface Options {
  headers?: IncomingHttpHeaders;
  timeout?: number;
  qs?: {
    [key: string]: any;
  };
  json?: any;
  body?: string | Buffer | NodeJS.ReadableStream;
}

2.4. Response

• statusCode - a number representing the HTTP status code (e.g. 200, 400, 401, 403)
• headers - HTTP response headers
• body - a string or buffer - use body.toString() for common use cases.
• getBody - a function with an optional encoding argument that returns the body if encoding is undefined, otherwise body.toString(encoding). If the statusCode >= 300, an Error is thrown instead.

In src/types.ts, the following is defined:

export interface Response {
  statusCode: number;
  headers: OutgoingHttpHeaders;
  body: string | Buffer;
  getBody: (encoding?: BufferEncoding) => string | Buffer;
}

3. License

MIT

4. Caveats

This library was developed mainly to improve performance with sending synchronous requests in NodeJS.

It was designed to work with UNIX-like systems for UNSW students enrolled in COMP1531 Software Fundamentals.

Tested to be working on Arch & Debian Linux. Since node-libcurl is the core of this module, it is likely also compatible with other operating systems such as MacOS and Windows.