6.0 KiB
6.0 KiB
node-fetch
A light-weight module that brings window.fetch
to Node.js
Motivation
Instead of implementing XMLHttpRequest
in Node.js to run browser-specific Fetch polyfill, why not go from native http
to Fetch
API directly? Hence node-fetch
, minimal code for a window.fetch
compatible API on Node.js runtime.
See Matt Andrews' isomorphic-fetch for isomorphic usage (exports node-fetch
for server-side, whatwg-fetch
for client-side).
Features
- Stay consistent with
window.fetch
API. - Make conscious trade-off when following whatwg fetch spec and stream spec implementation details, document known difference.
- Use native promise, but allow substituting it with [insert your favorite promise library].
- Use native stream for body, on both request and response.
- Decode content encoding (gzip/deflate) properly, and convert string output (such as
res.text()
andres.json()
) to UTF-8 automatically. - Useful extensions such as timeout, redirect limit, response size limit, explicit errors for troubleshooting.
Difference from client-side fetch
- See Known Differences for details.
- If you happen to use a missing feature that
window.fetch
offers, feel free to open an issue. - Pull requests are welcomed too!
Install
npm install node-fetch --save
Usage
var fetch = require('node-fetch');
// if you are on node v0.10, set a Promise library first, eg.
// fetch.Promise = require('bluebird');
// plain text or html
fetch('https://github.com/')
.then(function(res) {
return res.text();
}).then(function(body) {
console.log(body);
});
// json
fetch('https://api.github.com/users/github')
.then(function(res) {
return res.json();
}).then(function(json) {
console.log(json);
});
// catching network error
// 3xx-5xx responses are NOT network errors, and should be handled in then()
// you only need one catch() at the end of your promise chain
fetch('http://domain.invalid/')
.catch(function(err) {
console.log(err);
});
// stream
// the node.js way is to use stream when possible
fetch('https://assets-cdn.github.com/images/modules/logos_page/Octocat.png')
.then(function(res) {
var dest = fs.createWriteStream('./octocat.png');
res.body.pipe(dest);
});
// buffer
// if you prefer to cache binary data in full, use buffer()
// note that buffer() is a node-fetch only API
var fileType = require('file-type');
fetch('https://assets-cdn.github.com/images/modules/logos_page/Octocat.png')
.then(function(res) {
return res.buffer();
}).then(function(buffer) {
fileType(buffer);
});
// meta
fetch('https://github.com/')
.then(function(res) {
console.log(res.ok);
console.log(res.status);
console.log(res.statusText);
console.log(res.headers.raw());
console.log(res.headers.get('content-type'));
});
// post
fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', { method: 'POST', body: 'a=1' })
.then(function(res) {
return res.json();
}).then(function(json) {
console.log(json);
});
// post with stream from resumer
var resumer = require('resumer');
var stream = resumer().queue('a=1').end();
fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', { method: 'POST', body: stream })
.then(function(res) {
return res.json();
}).then(function(json) {
console.log(json);
});
// post with form-data (detect multipart)
var FormData = require('form-data');
var form = new FormData();
form.append('a', 1);
fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', { method: 'POST', body: form })
.then(function(res) {
return res.json();
}).then(function(json) {
console.log(json);
});
// post with form-data (custom headers)
// note that getHeaders() is non-standard API
var FormData = require('form-data');
var form = new FormData();
form.append('a', 1);
fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', { method: 'POST', body: form, headers: form.getHeaders() })
.then(function(res) {
return res.json();
}).then(function(json) {
console.log(json);
});
// node 0.12+, yield with co
var co = require('co');
co(function *() {
var res = yield fetch('https://api.github.com/users/github');
var json = yield res.json();
console.log(res);
});
See test cases for more examples.
API
fetch(url, options)
Returns a Promise
Url
Should be an absolute url, eg http://example.com/
Options
default values are shown, note that only method
, headers
, redirect
and body
are allowed in window.fetch
, others are node.js extensions.
{
method: 'GET'
, headers: {} // request header. format {a:'1'} or {b:['1','2','3']}
, redirect: 'follow' // set to `manual` to extract redirect headers, `error` to reject redirect
, follow: 20 // maximum redirect count. 0 to not follow redirect
, timeout: 0 // req/res timeout in ms, it resets on redirect. 0 to disable (OS limit applies)
, compress: true // support gzip/deflate content encoding. false to disable
, size: 0 // maximum response body size in bytes. 0 to disable
, body: empty // request body. can be a string, buffer, readable stream
, agent: null // http.Agent instance, allows custom proxy, certificate etc.
}
License
MIT
Acknowledgement
Thanks to github/fetch for providing a solid implementation reference.