Node.js's HTTP client is great, but a little too low level for common purposes. It's common practice for some libraries to extract this out so it's a bit nicer to work with.
function(method, path, customHeaders, body, callback) {
var client = http.createClient(url)
client.request(method, path, headers)
// ...
}I hate functions with lots of optional arguments. Let's turn that into:
var scopedClient = require('./lib')
, util = require('util')
var client = scopedClient.create('https://api.github.com')
.header('accept', 'application/json')
.path('user/show/technoweenie')
.get()(function(err, resp, body) {
util.puts(body)
})You can scope a client to make requests with certain parameters without affecting the main client instance:
client.path('https://api.github.com') // reset path
client.scope('users/technoweenie', function(cli) {
// cli's path is "https://api.github.com/users/technoweenie"
cli.get()(function(err, resp, body) {
util.puts(body)
})
})
// client's path is back to just "https://api.github.com"You can use .post(), .put(), .del(), and .head().
client.query({login:'technoweenie',token:'...'})
.scope('users/technoweenie', function(cli) {
var data = JSON.stringify({location: 'SF'})
// posting data!
cli.post(data)(function(err, resp, body) {
util.puts(body)
})
})Sometimes you want to stream the request body to the server. The request is a standard http.clientRequest.
client.post(function (req) {
req.write("...")
req.write("...")
})(function(err, resp, body) {
// ...
})And other times, you want to stream the response from the server. Simply listen for the request's response event yourself and omit the response callback.
client.get(function (err, req) {
// do your own thing
req.addListener('response', function (resp) {
resp.addListener('data', function (chunk) {
util.puts("CHUNK: " + chunk)
})
})
})()Basic HTTP authentication is supported:
client.get(function (err, req) {
// we'll keep this conversation secret...
req.auth('technoweenie', '...')
})Adding simple timeout support:
client = ScopedClient.create('http://10.255.255.1:9999');
client.timeout(100);
client.get()(function(err, resp, body) {
if (err) {
util.puts("ERROR: " + err);
}
});
Run this in the main directory to compile coffeescript to javascript as you go:
$ coffee -wc -o lib --no-wrap src/**/*.coffee
Copyright (c) 2014 rick. See LICENSE for details.