JarCastingxhr-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,
responseTypedefaults to'json' andbodywill be sent as JSON
- if true,
responseType(String)- can be
'text','arraybuffer'or'json' - defaults to
'text'unlessjsonis true
- can be
body(String|JSON)- an optional body to send with request
- sent as text unless
jsonis true
method(String)- an optional method to use, defaults to
'GET'
- an optional method to use, defaults to
timeout(Number)- milliseconds to use as a timeout, defaults to 0 (no timeout)
The callback is called with the arguments (error, data, response)
erroron success will be null/undefineddatathe result of the request, either a JSON object, string, orArrayBufferresponsethe 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
License
MIT, see LICENSE.md for details.
