@gmod/http-range-fetcher

Cache/manager for HTTP byte-range requests that merges requests together and caches results. Designed for applications that request lots of small byte ranges over HTTP that are often adjacent to each other.

Works both in node or webpack/browserify. Respects HTTP caching semantics, with the exception of setting a default minimum TTL of 1 second on requests that are not really supposed to be cached (e.g. Cache-Control: no-cache). You can turn that behavior off by setting minimumTTL to 0 though.

Install

$ npm install --save http-range-fetcher

Usage

const { HttpRangeFetcher } = require('http-range-fetcher')

const cache = new HttpRangeFetcher({})
cache.getRange('http://foo.bar/baz.bam', 20, 10).then(response => {
  assert(response.buffer.length === 10)
  assert(response.headers['content-range'] === '20-29/23422')
  // response objects contain `headers` and `buffer`.  the `headers` object
  // contains the original headers that came from the server in response to the
  // aggregated call, except the Content-Range header has been overwritten
  // to match the requested range, and it adds a X-Resource-Length header that
  // conveniently gives the total length of the remote resource so you don't
  // have to parse the Content-Range header.
  assert(response.headers['x-resource-length'] === '23422')
})

// these will be aggregated behind the scenes
// as a single request for a big chunk of the remote file,
// which will be cached to satisfy subsequent requests
Promise.all([
  cache.getRange('http://foo.bar/baz.bam', 20, 10),
  cache.getRange('http://foo.bar/baz.bam', 30, 10),
  cache.getRange('http://foo.bar/baz.bam', 40, 10),
  cache.getRange('http://foo.bar/baz.bam', 50, 10),
  cache.getRange('http://foo.bar/baz.bam', 60, 10),
  cache.getRange('http://foo.bar/baz.bam', 70, 10),
]).then(fetchResults => {
  fetchResults.forEach(res => assert(res.buffer.length === 10))
})

API

Table of Contents

Academic Use

This package was written with funding from the NHGRI as part of the JBrowse project. If you use it in an academic project that you publish, please cite the most recent JBrowse paper, which will be linked from jbrowse.org.

License

MIT © Robert Buels

Note

Renamed http-range-fetcher -> @gmod/http-range-fetcher in 2024