How is an HTTP POST request made in node.js?
How is an HTTP POST request made in node.js?
Accepted Answer
Here's an example of using node.js to make a POST request to the Google Compiler API:
// We need this to build our post string
var querystring = require('querystring');
var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');
function PostCode(codestring) {
// Build the post string from an object
var post_data = querystring.stringify({
'compilation_level' : 'ADVANCED_OPTIMIZATIONS',
'output_format': 'json',
'output_info': 'compiled_code',
'warning_level' : 'QUIET',
'js_code' : codestring
});
// An object of options to indicate where to post to
var post_options = {
host: 'closure-compiler.appspot.com',
port: '80',
path: '/compile',
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'Content-Length': Buffer.byteLength(post_data)
}
};
// Set up the request
var post_req = http.request(post_options, function(res) {
res.setEncoding('utf8');
res.on('data', function (chunk) {
console.log('Response: ' + chunk);
});
});
// post the data
post_req.write(post_data);
post_req.end();
}
// This is an async file read
fs.readFile('LinkedList.js', 'utf-8', function (err, data) {
if (err) {
// If this were just a small part of the application, you would
// want to handle this differently, maybe throwing an exception
// for the caller to handle. Since the file is absolutely essential
// to the program's functionality, we're going to exit with a fatal
// error instead.
console.log("FATAL An error occurred trying to read in the file: " + err);
process.exit(-2);
}
// Make sure there's data before we post it
if(data) {
PostCode(data);
}
else {
console.log("No data to post");
process.exit(-1);
}
});
I've updated the code to show how to post data from a file, instead of the hardcoded string. It uses the async fs.readFile
command to achieve this, posting the actual code after a successful read. If there's an error, it is thrown, and if there's no data the process exits with a negative value to indicate failure.
Popular Answer
This gets a lot easier if you use the request library.
var request = require('request');
request.post(
'http://www.yoursite.com/formpage',
{ json: { key: 'value' } },
function (error, response, body) {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
console.log(body);
}
}
);
Aside from providing a nice syntax it makes json requests easy, handles oauth signing (for twitter, etc.), can do multi-part forms (e.g. for uploading files) and streaming.
To install request use command npm install request
Read more… Read less…
You can use request library. https://www.npmjs.com/package/request
var request = require('request');
To post JSON data:
var myJSONObject = { ... };
request({
url: "http://josiahchoi.com/myjson",
method: "POST",
json: true, // <--Very important!!!
body: myJSONObject
}, function (error, response, body){
console.log(response);
});
To post xml data:
var myXMLText = '<xml>...........</xml>'
request({
url: "http://josiahchoi.com/myjson",
method: "POST",
headers: {
"content-type": "application/xml", // <--Very important!!!
},
body: myXMLText
}, function (error, response, body){
console.log(response);
});
I use Restler and Needle for production purposes. They are both much more powerful than native httprequest. It is possible to request with basic authentication, special header entry or even upload/download files.
As for post/get operation, they also are much simpler to use than raw ajax calls using httprequest.
needle.post('https://my.app.com/endpoint', {foo:'bar'},
function(err, resp, body){
console.log(body);
});
Simple and dependency-free. Uses a Promise so that you can await the result. It returns the response body and does not check the response status code.
const https = require('https');
function httpsPost({body, ...options}) {
return new Promise((resolve,reject) => {
const req = https.request({
method: 'POST',
...options,
}, res => {
const chunks = [];
res.on('data', data => chunks.push(data))
res.on('end', () => {
let body = Buffer.concat(chunks);
switch(res.headers['content-type']) {
case 'application/json':
body = JSON.parse(body);
break;
}
resolve(body)
})
})
req.on('error',reject);
if(body) {
req.write(body);
}
req.end();
})
}
Usage:
const res = await httpsPost({
hostname: 'sentry.io',
path: `/api/0/organizations/org/releases/${changesetId}/deploys/`,
headers: {
'Authorization': `Bearer ${process.env.SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN}`,
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
},
body: JSON.stringify({
environment: isLive ? 'production' : 'demo',
})
})
There are dozens of open-source libraries available that you can use to making an HTTP POST request in Node.
1. Axios (Recommended)
const axios = require('axios');
const data = {
name: 'John Doe',
job: 'Content Writer'
};
axios.post('https://reqres.in/api/users', data)
.then((res) => {
console.log(`Status: ${res.status}`);
console.log('Body: ', res.data);
}).catch((err) => {
console.error(err);
});
2. Needle
const needle = require('needle');
const data = {
name: 'John Doe',
job: 'Content Writer'
};
needle('post', 'https://reqres.in/api/users', data, {json: true})
.then((res) => {
console.log(`Status: ${res.statusCode}`);
console.log('Body: ', res.body);
}).catch((err) => {
console.error(err);
});
3. Request
const request = require('request');
const options = {
url: 'https://reqres.in/api/users',
json: true,
body: {
name: 'John Doe',
job: 'Content Writer'
}
};
request.post(options, (err, res, body) => {
if (err) {
return console.log(err);
}
console.log(`Status: ${res.statusCode}`);
console.log(body);
});
4. Native HTTPS Module
const https = require('https');
const data = JSON.stringify({
name: 'John Doe',
job: 'Content Writer'
});
const options = {
hostname: 'reqres.in',
path: '/api/users',
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
'Content-Length': data.length
}
};
const req = https.request(options, (res) => {
let data = '';
console.log('Status Code:', res.statusCode);
res.on('data', (chunk) => {
data += chunk;
});
res.on('end', () => {
console.log('Body: ', JSON.parse(data));
});
}).on("error", (err) => {
console.log("Error: ", err.message);
});
req.write(data);
req.end();
For details, check out this article.
You can also use Requestify, a really cool and simple HTTP client I wrote for nodeJS + it supports caching.
Just do the following:
var requestify = require('requestify');
requestify.post('http://example.com', {
hello: 'world'
})
.then(function(response) {
// Get the response body (JSON parsed or jQuery object for XMLs)
response.getBody();
});