JarCastingBrowser Request: The easiest HTTP library you'll ever see
Browser Request is a port of Mikeal Rogers's ubiquitous and excellent [request][req] package to the browser.
Jealous of Node.js? Pining for clever callbacks? Request is for you.
Don't care about Node.js? Looking for less tedium and a no-nonsense API? Request is for you too.
Examples
Fetch a resource:
request('/some/resource.txt', function(er, response, body) {
if(er)
throw er;
console.log("I got: " + body);
})
Send a resource:
request.put({uri:'/some/resource.xml', body:'<foo><bar/></foo>'}, function(er, response) {
if(er)
throw new Error("XML PUT failed (" + er + "): HTTP status was " + response.status);
console.log("Stored the XML");
})
To work with JSON, set options.json to true. Request will set the Content-Type and Accept headers, and handle parsing and serialization.
request({method:'POST', url:'/db', body:'{"relaxed":true}', json:true}, on_response)
function on_response(er, response, body) {
if(er)
throw er
if(result.ok)
console.log('Server ok, id = ' + result.id)
}
Or, use this shorthand version (pass data into the json option directly):
request({method:'POST', url:'/db', json:{relaxed:true}}, on_response)
Convenient CouchDB
Browser Request provides a CouchDB wrapper. It is the same as the JSON wrapper, however it will indicate an error if the HTTP query was fine, but there was a problem at the database level. The most common example is 409 Conflict.
request.couch({method:'PUT', url:'/db/existing_doc', body:{"will_conflict":"you bet!"}}, function(er, resp, result) {
if(er.error === 'conflict')
return console.error("Couch said no: " + er.reason); // Output: Couch said no: Document update conflict.
if(er)
throw er;
console.log("Existing doc stored. This must have been the first run.");
})
See the [Node.js Request README][req] for several more examples. Request intends to maintain feature parity with Node request (except what the browser disallows). If you find a discrepancy, please submit a bug report. Thanks!
Usage
Browserify
Browser Request is a [browserify][browserify]-enabled package.
First, add browser-request to your Node project
$ npm install browser-request
Next, make a module that uses the package.
// example.js - Example front-end (client-side) code using browser-request via browserify
//
var request = require('browser-request')
request('/', function(er, res) {
if(!er)
return console.log('browser-request got your root path:\n' + res.body)
console.log('There was an error, but at least browser-request loaded and ran!')
throw er
})
To build this for the browser, run it through browserify.
$ browserify --entry example.js --outfile example-built.js
Deploy example-built.js to your web site and use it from your page.
<script src="example-built.js"></script> <!-- Runs the request, outputs the result to the console -->
License
Browser Request is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.
