How is an HTTP POST request made in node.js?

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();
    });