xmlhttprequest-ssl

What is xmlhttprequest-ssl?

The xmlhttprequest-ssl package is a Node.js module that provides an implementation of the XMLHttpRequest object, which is primarily used in web browsers for making HTTP requests. This package is designed to work with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) for secure data transmission and is particularly useful for server-side applications that need to make HTTP requests in a way that's similar to client-side JavaScript code.

What are xmlhttprequest-ssl's main functionalities?

Making GET Requests

This feature allows you to make GET requests to retrieve data from a specified URL. The code sample demonstrates how to initiate a GET request, handle the response, and print the result or error.

const XMLHttpRequest = require('xmlhttprequest-ssl').XMLHttpRequest;
const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('GET', 'https://api.example.com/data', true);
xhr.onload = function () {
  if (xhr.status >= 200 && xhr.status < 300) {
    console.log('Response:', xhr.responseText);
  } else {
    console.error('Request failed');
  }
};
xhr.send();

Sending POST Requests

This feature enables sending POST requests to submit data to a server. The code sample shows how to set up a POST request, including setting the request header and sending data in JSON format.

const XMLHttpRequest = require('xmlhttprequest-ssl').XMLHttpRequest;
const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('POST', 'https://api.example.com/submit', true);
xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json;charset=UTF-8');
xhr.onload = function () {
  if (xhr.status >= 200 && xhr.status < 300) {
    console.log('Success:', xhr.responseText);
  } else {
    console.error('Request failed');
  }
};
xhr.send(JSON.stringify({ key: 'value' }));

Other packages similar to xmlhttprequest-ssl

axios

Axios is a popular HTTP client for the browser and Node.js. It provides a promise-based API and is capable of making XMLHttpRequests from the browser and http requests from Node.js. Compared to xmlhttprequest-ssl, Axios offers a more modern API, automatic JSON data transformation, and request and response interception.

node-fetch

node-fetch is a lightweight module that brings the Fetch API to Node.js. It aims to provide a consistent API with the browser's Fetch API, making it easy for developers to write isomorphic code that works on both the client and server. Unlike xmlhttprequest-ssl, node-fetch uses Promises, which can simplify asynchronous code.

got

Got is a human-friendly and powerful HTTP request library for Node.js. It supports redirections, retries, streams, and more. Got is designed to be a simpler and more usable alternative to Node's native http module, and it offers more advanced features compared to xmlhttprequest-ssl, such as built-in JSON parsing and improved error handling.

README

node-XMLHttpRequest

Fork of node-XMLHttpRequest by driverdan. Forked and published to npm because a pull request is not being created and merged. Changes made by rase- are needed for engine.io-client.

Usage

Here's how to include the module in your project and use as the browser-based XHR object.

var XMLHttpRequest = require("xmlhttprequest-ssl").XMLHttpRequest;
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

Note: use the lowercase string "xmlhttprequest-ssl" in your require(). On case-sensitive systems (eg Linux) using uppercase letters won't work.

Non-standard features

Additional options

Non-standard options for this module are passed through the XMLHttpRequest constructor. Here is the list of all options:

Option	Default value	Description
ca	undefined	Control https: requests, you can find their functionality in the Nodejs Documentation
cert
ciphers
key
passhphrase
pfx
rejectUnauthorized	true
agent	undefined	Allows to specify a Nodejs Agent instance, allowing connection reuse
autoUnref	false	Set to any truthy value to prevent a process from not exiting naturally because a request socket from this module is still open
maxRedirects	20	Allows control over the maximum number of redirects that are followed
allowFileSystemResources	true	Allows control access to the local filesystem through the file: protocol
origin	undefined	Set a base URL for the requests called using this instance. The resulting request URL will be constructed as follows: new URL(url, origin)
syncPolicy	"warn"	Control feature behavior of the synchronous feature: "disabled": Disable the feature completely, throws error after calling .send() if in synchronous mode "warn": Enable the feature, but show a warning when calling .open() with synchronous mode "enabled": Enable the feature without showing any additional warnings or errors
disableHeaderCheck	false	Disable the check against forbidden headers to be added to a XHR request
xmlParser	none	Specify a parser (non-async) to parse document from text when xhr.responseType is either "document" or in text format. If the parser is invalid or omitted, xhr.responseXML will be null
textDecoder	TextDecoder or buf.toString(enc) depending on Node version	Specify a text decoder (non-async), accepting a buffer buf and encoding enc to decode to desired encoding. Note that TextDecoder at version 12 does not support a wide range of encodings than later node version does

Additional methods

XMLHttpRequest object created using this library exposes xhr.getRequestHeader(header_name) method to retrieve any header content by name in the request headers list. This feature is deprecated and will be removed in future releases.

Original README

Versions

Version 2.0.0 introduces a potentially breaking change concerning local file system requests. If these requests fail this library now returns the errno (or -1) as the response status code instead of returning status code 0.

Prior to 1.4.0 version numbers were arbitrary. From 1.4.0 on they conform to the standard major.minor.bugfix. 1.x shouldn't necessarily be considered stable just because it's above 0.x.

Since the XMLHttpRequest API is stable this library's API is stable as well. Major version numbers indicate significant core code changes. Minor versions indicate minor core code changes or better conformity to the W3C spec.

License

MIT license. See LICENSE for full details.

Supports

• Async and synchronous requests
• GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE requests
• All spec methods (open, send, abort, getRequestHeader, getAllRequestHeaders, event methods)
• Requests to all domains

Known Issues / Missing Features

For a list of open issues or to report your own visit the github issues page.

• Local file access may have unexpected results for non-UTF8 files
• Synchronous requests don't set headers properly
• Synchronous requests freeze node while waiting for response (But that's what you want, right? Stick with async!).
• Some events are missing, such as abort
• getRequestHeader is case-sensitive
• Cookies aren't persisted between requests
• Missing XML support
• Missing basic auth