33 KiB
Request — Simplified HTTP client
Super simple to use
Request is designed to be the simplest way possible to make http calls. It supports HTTPS and follows redirects by default.
var request = require('request');
request('http://www.google.com', function (error, response, body) {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
console.log(body) // Show the HTML for the Google homepage.
}
})
Streaming
You can stream any response to a file stream.
request('http://google.com/doodle.png').pipe(fs.createWriteStream('doodle.png'))
You can also stream a file to a PUT or POST request. This method will also check the file extension against a mapping of file extensions to content-types (in this case application/json
) and use the proper content-type
in the PUT request (if the headers don’t already provide one).
fs.createReadStream('file.json').pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/obj.json'))
Request can also pipe
to itself. When doing so, content-type
and content-length
are preserved in the PUT headers.
request.get('http://google.com/img.png').pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/img.png'))
Request emits a "response" event when a response is received. The response
argument will be an instance of http.IncomingMessage.
request
.get('http://google.com/img.png')
.on('response', function(response) {
console.log(response.statusCode) // 200
console.log(response.headers['content-type']) // 'image/png'
})
.pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/img.png'))
To easily handle errors when streaming requests, listen to the error
event before piping:
request
.get('http://mysite.com/doodle.png')
.on('error', function(err) {
console.log(err)
})
.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('doodle.png'))
Now let’s get fancy.
http.createServer(function (req, resp) {
if (req.url === '/doodle.png') {
if (req.method === 'PUT') {
req.pipe(request.put('http://mysite.com/doodle.png'))
} else if (req.method === 'GET' || req.method === 'HEAD') {
request.get('http://mysite.com/doodle.png').pipe(resp)
}
}
})
You can also pipe()
from http.ServerRequest
instances, as well as to http.ServerResponse
instances. The HTTP method, headers, and entity-body data will be sent. Which means that, if you don't really care about security, you can do:
http.createServer(function (req, resp) {
if (req.url === '/doodle.png') {
var x = request('http://mysite.com/doodle.png')
req.pipe(x)
x.pipe(resp)
}
})
And since pipe()
returns the destination stream in ≥ Node 0.5.x you can do one line proxying. :)
req.pipe(request('http://mysite.com/doodle.png')).pipe(resp)
Also, none of this new functionality conflicts with requests previous features, it just expands them.
var r = request.defaults({'proxy':'http://localproxy.com'})
http.createServer(function (req, resp) {
if (req.url === '/doodle.png') {
r.get('http://google.com/doodle.png').pipe(resp)
}
})
You can still use intermediate proxies, the requests will still follow HTTP forwards, etc.
Proxies
If you specify a proxy
option, then the request (and any subsequent
redirects) will be sent via a connection to the proxy server.
If your endpoint is an https
url, and you are using a proxy, then
request will send a CONNECT
request to the proxy server first, and
then use the supplied connection to connect to the endpoint.
That is, first it will make a request like:
HTTP/1.1 CONNECT endpoint-server.com:80
Host: proxy-server.com
User-Agent: whatever user agent you specify
and then the proxy server make a TCP connection to endpoint-server
on port 80
, and return a response that looks like:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
At this point, the connection is left open, and the client is
communicating directly with the endpoint-server.com
machine.
See the wikipedia page on HTTP Tunneling for more information.
By default, when proxying http
traffic, request will simply make a
standard proxied http
request. This is done by making the url
section of the initial line of the request a fully qualified url to
the endpoint.
For example, it will make a single request that looks like:
HTTP/1.1 GET http://endpoint-server.com/some-url
Host: proxy-server.com
Other-Headers: all go here
request body or whatever
Because a pure "http over http" tunnel offers no additional security
or other features, it is generally simpler to go with a
straightforward HTTP proxy in this case. However, if you would like
to force a tunneling proxy, you may set the tunnel
option to true
.
You can also make a standard proxied http
request by explicitly setting
tunnel : false
, but note that this will allow the proxy to see the traffic
to/from the destination server.
If you are using a tunneling proxy, you may set the
proxyHeaderWhiteList
to share certain headers with the proxy.
You can also set the proxyHeaderExclusiveList
to share certain
headers only with the proxy and not with destination host.
By default, this set is:
accept
accept-charset
accept-encoding
accept-language
accept-ranges
cache-control
content-encoding
content-language
content-length
content-location
content-md5
content-range
content-type
connection
date
expect
max-forwards
pragma
proxy-authorization
referer
te
transfer-encoding
user-agent
via
Note that, when using a tunneling proxy, the proxy-authorization
header and any headers from custom proxyHeaderExclusiveList
are
never sent to the endpoint server, but only to the proxy server.
Controlling proxy behaviour using environment variables
The following environment variables are respected by request
:
HTTP_PROXY
/http_proxy
HTTPS_PROXY
/https_proxy
NO_PROXY
/no_proxy
When HTTP_PROXY
/ http_proxy
are set, they will be used to proxy non-SSL requests that do not have an explicit proxy
configuration option present. Similarly, HTTPS_PROXY
/ https_proxy
will be respected for SSL requests that do not have an explicit proxy
configuration option. It is valid to define a proxy in one of the environment variables, but then override it for a specific request, using the proxy
configuration option. Furthermore, the proxy
configuration option can be explicitly set to false / null to opt out of proxying altogether for that request.
request
is also aware of the NO_PROXY
/no_proxy
environment variables. These variables provide a granular way to opt out of proxying, on a per-host basis. It should contain a comma separated list of hosts to opt out of proxying. It is also possible to opt of proxying when a particular destination port is used. Finally, the variable may be set to *
to opt out of the implicit proxy configuration of the other environment variables.
Here's some examples of valid no_proxy
values:
google.com
- don't proxy HTTP/HTTPS requests to Google.google.com:443
- don't proxy HTTPS requests to Google, but do proxy HTTP requests to Google.google.com:443, yahoo.com:80
- don't proxy HTTPS requests to Google, and don't proxy HTTP requests to Yahoo!*
- ignorehttps_proxy
/http_proxy
environment variables altogether.
UNIX Socket
request
supports making requests to UNIX Domain Sockets. To make one, use the following URL scheme:
/* Pattern */ 'http://unix:SOCKET:PATH'
/* Example */ request.get('http://unix:/absolute/path/to/unix.socket:/request/path')
Note: The SOCKET
path is assumed to be absolute to the root of the host file system.
Forms
request
supports application/x-www-form-urlencoded
and multipart/form-data
form uploads. For multipart/related
refer to the multipart
API.
application/x-www-form-urlencoded (URL-Encoded Forms)
URL-encoded forms are simple.
request.post('http://service.com/upload', {form:{key:'value'}})
// or
request.post('http://service.com/upload').form({key:'value'})
// or
request.post({url:'http://service.com/upload', form: {key:'value'}}, function(err,httpResponse,body){ /* ... */ })
multipart/form-data (Multipart Form Uploads)
For multipart/form-data
we use the form-data library by @felixge. For the most cases, you can pass your upload form data via the formData
option.
var formData = {
// Pass a simple key-value pair
my_field: 'my_value',
// Pass data via Buffers
my_buffer: new Buffer([1, 2, 3]),
// Pass data via Streams
my_file: fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/unicycle.jpg'),
// Pass multiple values /w an Array
attachments: [
fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/attachment1.jpg'),
fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/attachment2.jpg')
],
// Pass optional meta-data with an 'options' object with style: {value: DATA, options: OPTIONS}
// Use case: for some types of streams, you'll need to provide "file"-related information manually.
// See the `form-data` README for more information about options: https://github.com/felixge/node-form-data
custom_file: {
value: fs.createReadStream('/dev/urandom'),
options: {
filename: 'topsecret.jpg',
contentType: 'image/jpg'
}
}
};
request.post({url:'http://service.com/upload', formData: formData}, function optionalCallback(err, httpResponse, body) {
if (err) {
return console.error('upload failed:', err);
}
console.log('Upload successful! Server responded with:', body);
});
For advanced cases, you can access the form-data object itself via r.form()
. This can be modified until the request is fired on the next cycle of the event-loop. (Note that this calling form()
will clear the currently set form data for that request.)
// NOTE: Advanced use-case, for normal use see 'formData' usage above
var r = request.post('http://service.com/upload', function optionalCallback(err, httpResponse, body) { // ...
var form = r.form();
form.append('my_field', 'my_value');
form.append('my_buffer', new Buffer([1, 2, 3]));
form.append('custom_file', fs.createReadStream(__dirname + '/unicycle.jpg'), {filename: 'unicycle.jpg'});
See the form-data README for more information & examples.
multipart/related
Some variations in different HTTP implementations require a newline/CRLF before, after, or both before and after the boundary of a multipart/related
request (using the multipart option). This has been observed in the .NET WebAPI version 4.0. You can turn on a boundary preambleCRLF or postamble by passing them as true
to your request options.
request({
method: 'PUT',
preambleCRLF: true,
postambleCRLF: true,
uri: 'http://service.com/upload',
multipart: [
{
'content-type': 'application/json'
body: JSON.stringify({foo: 'bar', _attachments: {'message.txt': {follows: true, length: 18, 'content_type': 'text/plain' }}})
},
{ body: 'I am an attachment' },
{ body: fs.createReadStream('image.png') }
],
// alternatively pass an object containing additional options
multipart: {
chunked: false,
data: [
{
'content-type': 'application/json',
body: JSON.stringify({foo: 'bar', _attachments: {'message.txt': {follows: true, length: 18, 'content_type': 'text/plain' }}})
},
{ body: 'I am an attachment' }
]
}
},
function (error, response, body) {
if (error) {
return console.error('upload failed:', error);
}
console.log('Upload successful! Server responded with:', body);
})
HTTP Authentication
request.get('http://some.server.com/').auth('username', 'password', false);
// or
request.get('http://some.server.com/', {
'auth': {
'user': 'username',
'pass': 'password',
'sendImmediately': false
}
});
// or
request.get('http://some.server.com/').auth(null, null, true, 'bearerToken');
// or
request.get('http://some.server.com/', {
'auth': {
'bearer': 'bearerToken'
}
});
If passed as an option, auth
should be a hash containing values:
user
||username
pass
||password
sendImmediately
(optional)bearer
(optional)
The method form takes parameters
auth(username, password, sendImmediately, bearer)
.
sendImmediately
defaults to true
, which causes a basic or bearer
authentication header to be sent. If sendImmediately
is false
, then
request
will retry with a proper authentication header after receiving a
401
response from the server (which must contain a WWW-Authenticate
header
indicating the required authentication method).
Note that you can also specify basic authentication using the URL itself, as
detailed in RFC 1738. Simply pass the
user:password
before the host with an @
sign:
var username = 'username',
password = 'password',
url = 'http://' + username + ':' + password + '@some.server.com';
request({url: url}, function (error, response, body) {
// Do more stuff with 'body' here
});
Digest authentication is supported, but it only works with sendImmediately
set to false
; otherwise request
will send basic authentication on the
initial request, which will probably cause the request to fail.
Bearer authentication is supported, and is activated when the bearer
value is
available. The value may be either a String
or a Function
returning a
String
. Using a function to supply the bearer token is particularly useful if
used in conjuction with defaults
to allow a single function to supply the
last known token at the time of sending a request, or to compute one on the fly.
OAuth Signing
OAuth version 1.0 is supported. The default signing algorithm is HMAC-SHA1:
// OAuth1.0 - 3-legged server side flow (Twitter example)
// step 1
var qs = require('querystring')
, oauth =
{ callback: 'http://mysite.com/callback/'
, consumer_key: CONSUMER_KEY
, consumer_secret: CONSUMER_SECRET
}
, url = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/request_token'
;
request.post({url:url, oauth:oauth}, function (e, r, body) {
// Ideally, you would take the body in the response
// and construct a URL that a user clicks on (like a sign in button).
// The verifier is only available in the response after a user has
// verified with twitter that they are authorizing your app.
// step 2
var req_data = qs.parse(body)
var uri = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authenticate'
+ '?' + qs.stringify({oauth_token: req_data.oauth_token})
// redirect the user to the authorize uri
// step 3
// after the user is redirected back to your server
var auth_data = qs.parse(body)
, oauth =
{ consumer_key: CONSUMER_KEY
, consumer_secret: CONSUMER_SECRET
, token: auth_data.oauth_token
, token_secret: req_data.oauth_token_secret
, verifier: auth_data.oauth_verifier
}
, url = 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/access_token'
;
request.post({url:url, oauth:oauth}, function (e, r, body) {
// ready to make signed requests on behalf of the user
var perm_data = qs.parse(body)
, oauth =
{ consumer_key: CONSUMER_KEY
, consumer_secret: CONSUMER_SECRET
, token: perm_data.oauth_token
, token_secret: perm_data.oauth_token_secret
}
, url = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/users/show.json'
, qs =
{ screen_name: perm_data.screen_name
, user_id: perm_data.user_id
}
;
request.get({url:url, oauth:oauth, json:true}, function (e, r, user) {
console.log(user)
})
})
})
For RSA-SHA1 signing, make the following changes to the OAuth options object:
- Pass
signature_method : 'RSA-SHA1'
- Instead of
consumer_secret
, specify aprivate_key
string in PEM format
For PLAINTEXT signing, make the following changes to the OAuth options object:
- Pass
signature_method : 'PLAINTEXT'
To send OAuth parameters via query params or in a post body as described in The Consumer Request Parameters section of the oauth1 spec:
- Pass
transport_method : 'query'
ortransport_method : 'body'
in the OAuth options object. transport_method
defaults to'header'
Custom HTTP Headers
HTTP Headers, such as User-Agent
, can be set in the options
object.
In the example below, we call the github API to find out the number
of stars and forks for the request repository. This requires a
custom User-Agent
header as well as https.
var request = require('request');
var options = {
url: 'https://api.github.com/repos/request/request',
headers: {
'User-Agent': 'request'
}
};
function callback(error, response, body) {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
var info = JSON.parse(body);
console.log(info.stargazers_count + " Stars");
console.log(info.forks_count + " Forks");
}
}
request(options, callback);
TLS/SSL Protocol
TLS/SSL Protocol options, such as cert
, key
and passphrase
, can be
set in the agentOptions
property of the options
object.
In the example below, we call an API requires client side SSL certificate
(in PEM format) with passphrase protected private key (in PEM format) and disable the SSLv3 protocol:
var fs = require('fs')
, path = require('path')
, certFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.crt')
, keyFile = path.resolve(__dirname, 'ssl/client.key')
, request = require('request');
var options = {
url: 'https://api.some-server.com/',
agentOptions: {
cert: fs.readFileSync(certFile),
key: fs.readFileSync(keyFile),
// Or use `pfx` property replacing `cert` and `key` when using private key, certificate and CA certs in PFX or PKCS12 format:
// pfx: fs.readFileSync(pfxFilePath),
passphrase: 'password',
securityOptions: 'SSL_OP_NO_SSLv3'
}
};
request.get(options);
It is able to force using SSLv3 only by specifying secureProtocol
:
request.get({
url: 'https://api.some-server.com/',
agentOptions: {
secureProtocol: 'SSLv3_method'
}
});
It is possible to accept other certificates than those signed by generally allowed Certificate Authorities (CAs).
This can be useful, for example, when using self-signed certificates.
To allow a different certificate, you can specify the signing CA by adding the contents of the CA's certificate file to the agentOptions
:
request.get({
url: 'https://api.some-server.com/',
agentOptions: {
ca: fs.readFileSync('ca.cert.pem')
}
});
request(options, callback)
The first argument can be either a url
or an options
object. The only required option is uri
; all others are optional.
-
uri
||url
- fully qualified uri or a parsed url object fromurl.parse()
-
qs
- object containing querystring values to be appended to theuri
-
useQuerystring
- If true, usequerystring
to stringify and parse querystrings, otherwise useqs
(default:false
). Set this option totrue
if you need arrays to be serialized asfoo=bar&foo=baz
instead of the defaultfoo[0]=bar&foo[1]=baz
. -
method
- http method (default:"GET"
) -
headers
- http headers (default:{}
) -
body
- entity body for PATCH, POST and PUT requests. Must be aBuffer
orString
, unlessjson
istrue
. Ifjson
istrue
, thenbody
must be a JSON-serializable object. -
form
- when passed an object or a querystring, this setsbody
to a querystring representation of value, and addsContent-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
header. When passed no options, aFormData
instance is returned (and is piped to request). See "Forms" section above. -
formData
- Data to pass for amultipart/form-data
request. See Forms section above. -
multipart
- array of objects which contain their own headers andbody
attributes. Sends amultipart/related
request. See Forms section above.- Alternatively you can pass in an object
{chunked: false, data: []}
wherechunked
is used to specify whether the request is sent in chunked transfer encoding In non-chunked requests, data items with body streams are not allowed.
- Alternatively you can pass in an object
-
auth
- A hash containing valuesuser
||username
,pass
||password
, andsendImmediately
(optional). See documentation above. -
json
- setsbody
but to JSON representation of value and addsContent-type: application/json
header. Additionally, parses the response body as JSON. -
jsonReviver
- a reviver function that will be passed toJSON.parse()
when parsing a JSON response body. -
preambleCRLF
- append a newline/CRLF before the boundary of yourmultipart/form-data
request. -
postambleCRLF
- append a newline/CRLF at the end of the boundary of yourmultipart/form-data
request. -
followRedirect
- follow HTTP 3xx responses as redirects (default:true
). This property can also be implemented as function which getsresponse
object as a single argument and should returntrue
if redirects should continue orfalse
otherwise. -
followAllRedirects
- follow non-GET HTTP 3xx responses as redirects (default:false
) -
maxRedirects
- the maximum number of redirects to follow (default:10
) -
encoding
- Encoding to be used onsetEncoding
of response data. Ifnull
, thebody
is returned as aBuffer
. Anything else (including the default value ofundefined
) will be passed as the encoding parameter totoString()
(meaning this is effectivelyutf8
by default). -
pool
- An object describing which agents to use for the request. If this option is omitted the request will use the global agent (as long as your options allow for it). Otherwise, request will search the pool for your custom agent. If no custom agent is found, a new agent will be created and added to the pool.- A
maxSockets
property can also be provided on thepool
object to set the max number of sockets for all agents created (ex:pool: {maxSockets: Infinity}
). - Note that if you are sending multiple requests in a loop and creating
multiple new
pool
objects,maxSockets
will not work as intended. To work around this, either userequest.defaults
with your pool options or create the pool object with themaxSockets
property outside of the loop.
- A
-
timeout
- Integer containing the number of milliseconds to wait for a request to respond before aborting the request. Note that if the underlying TCP connection cannot be established, the OS-wide TCP connection timeout will overrule thetimeout
option (the default in Linux is around 20 seconds). -
proxy
- An HTTP proxy to be used. Supports proxy Auth with Basic Auth, identical to support for theurl
parameter (by embedding the auth info in theuri
) -
oauth
- Options for OAuth HMAC-SHA1 signing. See documentation above. -
hawk
- Options for Hawk signing. Thecredentials
key must contain the necessary signing info, see hawk docs for details. -
strictSSL
- Iftrue
, requires SSL certificates be valid. Note: to use your own certificate authority, you need to specify an agent that was created with that CA as an option. -
agentOptions
- Object containing user agent options. See documentation above. Note: see tls API doc for TLS/SSL options. -
jar
- Iftrue
andtough-cookie
is installed, remember cookies for future use (or define your custom cookie jar; see examples section) -
aws
-object
containing AWS signing information. Should have the propertieskey
,secret
. Also requires the propertybucket
, unless you’re specifying yourbucket
as part of the path, or the request doesn’t use a bucket (i.e. GET Services) -
httpSignature
- Options for the HTTP Signature Scheme using Joyent's library. ThekeyId
andkey
properties must be specified. See the docs for other options. -
localAddress
- Local interface to bind for network connections. -
gzip
- Iftrue
, add anAccept-Encoding
header to request compressed content encodings from the server (if not already present) and decode supported content encodings in the response. Note: Automatic decoding of the response content is performed on the body data returned throughrequest
(both through therequest
stream and passed to the callback function) but is not performed on theresponse
stream (available from theresponse
event) which is the unmodifiedhttp.IncomingMessage
object which may contain compressed data. See example below. -
tunnel
- controls the behavior of HTTPCONNECT
tunneling as follows:undefined
(default) -true
if the destination ishttps
or a previous request in the redirect chain used a tunneling proxy,false
otherwisetrue
- always tunnel to the destination by making aCONNECT
request to the proxyfalse
- request the destination as aGET
request.
-
proxyHeaderWhiteList
- A whitelist of headers to send to a tunneling proxy. -
proxyHeaderExclusiveList
- A whitelist of headers to send exclusively to a tunneling proxy and not to destination.
The callback argument gets 3 arguments:
- An
error
when applicable (usually fromhttp.ClientRequest
object) - An
http.IncomingMessage
object - The third is the
response
body (String
orBuffer
, or JSON object if thejson
option is supplied)
Convenience methods
There are also shorthand methods for different HTTP METHODs and some other conveniences.
request.defaults(options)
This method returns a wrapper around the normal request API that defaults to whatever options you pass to it.
Note: request.defaults()
does not modify the global request API;
instead, it returns a wrapper that has your default settings applied to it.
Note: You can call .defaults()
on the wrapper that is returned from
request.defaults
to add/override defaults that were previously defaulted.
For example:
//requests using baseRequest() will set the 'x-token' header
var baseRequest = request.defaults({
headers: {x-token: 'my-token'}
})
//requests using specialRequest() will include the 'x-token' header set in
//baseRequest and will also include the 'special' header
var specialRequest = baseRequest.defaults({
headers: {special: 'special value'}
})
request.put
Same as request()
, but defaults to method: "PUT"
.
request.put(url)
request.patch
Same as request()
, but defaults to method: "PATCH"
.
request.patch(url)
request.post
Same as request()
, but defaults to method: "POST"
.
request.post(url)
request.head
Same as request()
, but defaults to method: "HEAD"
.
request.head(url)
request.del
Same as request()
, but defaults to method: "DELETE"
.
request.del(url)
request.get
Same as request()
(for uniformity).
request.get(url)
request.cookie
Function that creates a new cookie.
request.cookie('key1=value1')
request.jar()
Function that creates a new cookie jar.
request.jar()
Examples:
var request = require('request')
, rand = Math.floor(Math.random()*100000000).toString()
;
request(
{ method: 'PUT'
, uri: 'http://mikeal.iriscouch.com/testjs/' + rand
, multipart:
[ { 'content-type': 'application/json'
, body: JSON.stringify({foo: 'bar', _attachments: {'message.txt': {follows: true, length: 18, 'content_type': 'text/plain' }}})
}
, { body: 'I am an attachment' }
]
}
, function (error, response, body) {
if(response.statusCode == 201){
console.log('document saved as: http://mikeal.iriscouch.com/testjs/'+ rand)
} else {
console.log('error: '+ response.statusCode)
console.log(body)
}
}
)
For backwards-compatibility, response compression is not supported by default.
To accept gzip-compressed responses, set the gzip
option to true
. Note
that the body data passed through request
is automatically decompressed
while the response object is unmodified and will contain compressed data if
the server sent a compressed response.
var request = require('request')
request(
{ method: 'GET'
, uri: 'http://www.google.com'
, gzip: true
}
, function (error, response, body) {
// body is the decompressed response body
console.log('server encoded the data as: ' + (response.headers['content-encoding'] || 'identity'))
console.log('the decoded data is: ' + body)
}
).on('data', function(data) {
// decompressed data as it is received
console.log('decoded chunk: ' + data)
})
.on('response', function(response) {
// unmodified http.IncomingMessage object
response.on('data', function(data) {
// compressed data as it is received
console.log('received ' + data.length + ' bytes of compressed data')
})
})
Cookies are disabled by default (else, they would be used in subsequent requests). To enable cookies, set jar
to true
(either in defaults
or options
) and install tough-cookie
.
var request = request.defaults({jar: true})
request('http://www.google.com', function () {
request('http://images.google.com')
})
To use a custom cookie jar (instead of request
’s global cookie jar), set jar
to an instance of request.jar()
(either in defaults
or options
)
var j = request.jar()
var request = request.defaults({jar:j})
request('http://www.google.com', function () {
request('http://images.google.com')
})
OR
var j = request.jar();
var cookie = request.cookie('key1=value1');
var url = 'http://www.google.com';
j.setCookie(cookie, url);
request({url: url, jar: j}, function () {
request('http://images.google.com')
})
To use a custom cookie store (such as a
FileCookieStore
which supports saving to and restoring from JSON files), pass it as a parameter
to request.jar()
:
var FileCookieStore = require('tough-cookie-filestore');
// NOTE - currently the 'cookies.json' file must already exist!
var j = request.jar(new FileCookieStore('cookies.json'));
request = request.defaults({ jar : j })
request('http://www.google.com', function() {
request('http://images.google.com')
})
The cookie store must be a
tough-cookie
store and it must support synchronous operations; see the
CookieStore
API docs
for details.
To inspect your cookie jar after a request:
var j = request.jar()
request({url: 'http://www.google.com', jar: j}, function () {
var cookie_string = j.getCookieString(uri); // "key1=value1; key2=value2; ..."
var cookies = j.getCookies(uri);
// [{key: 'key1', value: 'value1', domain: "www.google.com", ...}, ...]
})
Debugging
There are at least three ways to debug the operation of request
:
-
Launch the node process like
NODE_DEBUG=request node script.js
(lib,request,otherlib
works too). -
Set
require('request').debug = true
at any time (this does the same thing as #1). -
Use the request-debug module to view request and response headers and bodies.