xhr-request

What is xhr-request?

The xhr-request npm package is a simple utility for making XMLHttpRequests in a Node.js environment. It provides a straightforward API for performing HTTP requests and handling responses, making it easier to interact with web services.

What are xhr-request's main functionalities?

Basic GET Request

This feature allows you to perform a basic GET request to a specified URL. The response data is handled in a callback function.

const xhrRequest = require('xhr-request');

xhrRequest('https://api.example.com/data', { method: 'GET' }, (err, data) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(data);
});

POST Request with Data

This feature allows you to perform a POST request with a JSON payload. The response data is handled in a callback function.

const xhrRequest = require('xhr-request');

const postData = { key: 'value' };
xhrRequest('https://api.example.com/data', { method: 'POST', json: true, body: postData }, (err, data) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log(data);
});

Handling Response Headers

This feature allows you to access response headers along with the response data. The headers are available in the response object passed to the callback function.

const xhrRequest = require('xhr-request');

xhrRequest('https://api.example.com/data', { method: 'GET' }, (err, data, res) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log('Response Headers:', res.headers);
  console.log('Response Data:', data);
});

Other packages similar to xhr-request

axios

Axios is a promise-based HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. It provides a more feature-rich API compared to xhr-request, including support for interceptors, automatic JSON transformation, and more.

node-fetch

Node-fetch is a lightweight module that brings `window.fetch` to Node.js. It is similar to xhr-request in terms of simplicity but uses the Fetch API, which is more modern and widely adopted.

request

Request is a simplified HTTP client for Node.js with a lot of features for making HTTP requests. It is more comprehensive than xhr-request but has been deprecated in favor of more modern alternatives like axios and node-fetch.

README

xhr-request

An extremely tiny HTTP/HTTPS request client for Node and the browser. Uses xhr in the browser and simple-get in Node.

Supported response types: JSON, ArrayBuffer, and text (default).

For streaming requests, you can just use simple-get directly. It works in Node/browser and supports true streaming in new versions of Chrome/FireFox.

Install

npm install xhr-request --save

Example

A simple example, loading JSON:

var request = require('xhr-request')

request('http://foo.com/some/api', {
  json: true
}, function (err, data) {
  if (err) throw err
  
  // the JSON result
  console.log(data.foo.bar)
})

Another example, sending a JSON body with a query parameter. Receives binary data as the response.

var request = require('xhr-request')

request('http://foo.com/some/api', {
  method: 'PUT',
  json: true,
  body: { foo: 'bar' },
  responseType: 'arraybuffer',
  query: {
    sort: 'name'
  }
}, function (err, data) {
  if (err) throw err
  console.log('got ArrayBuffer result: ', data)
})

Motivation

There are a lot of HTTP clients, but most of them are Node-centric and lead to large browser bundles with builtins like url, buffer, http, zlib, streams, etc.

With browserify, this bundles to 7kb minified. Compare to 742kb for request, 153kb for got, 74kb for simple-get, and 25kb for nets.

Usage

req = xhrRequest(url, [opt], [callback])

Sends a request to the given url with optional opt settings, triggering callback on complete.

Options:

• query (String|Object)
  • the query parameters to use for the URL
• headers (Object)
  • the headers for the request
• json (Boolean)
  • if true, responseType defaults to 'json' and body will be sent as JSON
• responseType (String)
  • can be 'text', 'arraybuffer' or 'json'
  • defaults to 'text' unless json is true
• body (String|JSON)
  • an optional body to send with request
  • sent as text unless json is true
• method (String)
  • an optional method to use, defaults to 'GET'
• timeout (Number)
  • milliseconds to use as a timeout, defaults to 0 (no timeout)

The callback is called with the arguments (error, data, response)

• error on success will be null/undefined
• data the result of the request, either a JSON object, string, or ArrayBuffer
• response the request response, see below

The response object has the following form:

{
  statusCode: Number,
  method: String,
  headers: {},
  url: String,
  rawRequest: {}
}

The rawRequest is the XMLHttpRequest in the browser, and the http response in Node.

Since opt is optional, you can specify callback as the second argument.

req.abort()

The returned req (the ClientRequest or XMLHttpRequest) has an abort() method which can be used to cancel the request and send an Error to the callback.

See Also

• simple-get
• xhr
• got
• nets
• superagent
• axios

License

MIT, see LICENSE.md for details.