qhttp

Simple, fast, low overhead utility for making http requests.

A convenience wrapper to simplify using http but keep the common use cases fast. Similar to request, but without the added complexity and 2x faster making back-to-back calls.

QHttp auto-detects the request body and encodes it accordingly: strings as-is as text/plain, Buffers as-is as application/octet-stream, all else encoded with JSON.stringify as application/json. The response is not decoded, it is returned in a Buffer (or left to the caller; see below).

Included

• HttpClient - quick little web request caller

• parseUrl - fast http url parser, 18x faster than url.parse

• http_build_query - convert parameter hashes to query strings

• http_parse_query - convert query strings to parameter hashes

    npm install qhttp
    npm test qhttp

Package

The package exports a pre-constructed qhttp client object with methods get, post, put and delete, as well as several helper functions.

Exported functions:

• call, get, post, put, delete: make web requests using the qhttp singleton, see HttpClient below

• create: HttpClient factory for creating new pre-configured HttpClient objects. Also available as defaults.

• http_build_query: construct a query string from parts

• http_parse_query: parse a query string into its parts

• parseUrl: fast url.parse work-alike for http urls

• emulateRestifyClient(client): decorate client with some restify jsonClient methods and semantics

    var qhttp = require('qhttp');
    qhttp.get("http://example.com", function(err, res, body) {
        console.log(body);
    });

Functions

http_build_query( objectOrArray, [options] )

format a query string like PHP's http_build_query. In particular, it handles nested objects and nested arrays.

    var http_build_query = require('qhttp/http_build_query');
    var params = {a: 1, b: 2, c: [3, 4, [5, 6]]};
    var queryString = http_build_query(params, {leave_brackets: true});
    // => "a=1&b=2&c[0]=3&c[1]=4&c[2][0]=5&c[2][1]=6"

    var params = {d: {a: 1, b: 2, c: {a: 1, b: 2}}};
    var queryString = http_build_query(params, {leave_brackets: true});
    // => "d[a]=1&d[b]=2&d[c][a]=1&d[c][b]=2"

    var params = [1, 2, 3];
    var queryString = http_build_query(params, {numeric_prefix: 'idx'});
    // => "idx0=1&idx1=2&idx2=3"

Options:

• arg_separator - default '&'
• eq_sign - default '='
• numeric_prefix - string to prepend to numeric keys
• encoding - 'PHP_QUERY_RFC1738' (default) encodes spaces as '+', 'PHP_QUERY_RFC3986' encodes spaces as '%20'
• leave_brackets - encode {a:[3]} as "a[0]=3" and not "a%5B0%5D=3"

http_parse_query( string )

parse an http query, the counterpart to http_build_query. Similar to the php parse_str()

build up the parameters hash from the PHP-style query string. Parses name-value pairs as expected, a=1&b=2 is {a:1, b:2}. names value-less names as if set to one, i.e. a&b becomes {a:1, b:1}. Unlike PHP, gathers repeated parameters into arrays (e.g., a=1&a=2 is {a: [1, 2]} and not a=2. Like PHP, parses hierarchical values like a[i][j]=1 into {a: {i: {j:1}}}.

    var http_parse_query = require('qhttp/http_parse_query');
    var params = http_parse_query("a=1&b=2&c[0]=3&c[1]=4&c[2][0]=5");
    // => {a:1, b:2, c:{'0':3, '1':4, '2':{'0':5}}}

Todo: flat numerical hierarchies should be converted to arrays, not objects.. Currently a[0]=1&a[1]=2 parses a into the object {'0':1, '1':2} and not [1, 2]. This is not symmetric with http_build_query() behavior.

parseUrl( url )

parse simple URL strings the way url.parse does, but 4x faster. The parsed results are returned in a hash (without the url.parse functions), and all fields set by url.parse are set to the same values as by url.parse. The urls should be of the form (protocol) // (auth) (host) (path) (search) (hash) or (path)(search)(hash), eg. "http://user:[email protected]:80/path/name?a=1&b=2#tag1"

• protocol: http: or https: (http:)
• auth: user@ or user:password@ (user:pass)
• host: the non-auth string after the // and before the first / (example.com:80)
• path: the trailing end of the url string, not including the hash (/path/name?a=1&b=2)
• search: the portion of the string from the first '?' to the hash (?a=1&b=2)
• hash: the portion of the string from the first '#' to the end (#tag1)

In addition to the above fields, url.parse and parseUrl also separate

• hostname: host without the port (example.com)

• port: host port (80)

• username: user part of auth (user) (parseUrl only, not url.parse)

• password: password part of auth (pass) (parseUrl only, not url.parse)

• query: search without the leading '?' (a=1&b=2)

• pathname: path without the search component (/path/name)

• href: the normalized url string, from protocol to hash. This is often the same as the input url, but can differ if eg no path was specified "http://host.com?a=1" => "http://host.com/?a=1".

    var parseUrl = require('qhttp/parse-url');
    var url = "http://usr:[email protected]/path/name?query=yes#tag";
    var parts = parseUrl(url);
    // => { host: 'example.com:80', hostname: 'example.com', port: '80',
    //      auth: 'usr:pwd', hash: '#tag', query: 'query=yes' }

create( options )

Return a newly constructed HttpClient object preconfigured with the given options. See HttpClient below. Also available as defaults(options) for request compatibility.

get( url, body, callback(err, res, body) )

post( url, body, callback(err, res, body) )

put( url, body, callback(err, res, body) )

delete( url, body, callback(err, res, body) )

Convenience web request calls using the built-in singleton.

new HttpClient( options )

web request runner, built on top of http.request

Options

• url - base url to call, eg "http://host.com". A call to a bare path /rest/path will be combined with the base url to form "http://host.com/rest/path" for the request.
• headers - headers to pass to each request. Additional headers may be passed at call time
• request - http request function. Default is http.request
• srequest - https request function. Default is https.request
• returnBody - gather up the response body and return it in the callback (default true). If set to false, the web request callbacks will get just the res response object, which can then be gathered or piped by the caller.
• auth - http Basic authorization object containing username and password or authorization string in the form "username:password". user and pass are also ok.
• parseUrl - function to use for url string parsing. Default is require('qhttp/parse-url'), which parses only well-formatted urls in the form http://user:pass@host:80/path?query#tag but is 4x faster than Url.parse and reduces overall round-trip call latency by 10%.

The options are passed to request(), so in addition to the above HttpClient options, request options are also allowed. Null and undefined values are ignored.

Notable request options:

• agent - the http agent to use with request. Default is http.globalAgent See also agentkeepalive and qhttp-agent for faster, more predictable connection agents.

httpClient.call( method, uri, [body], callback(err, res, body) )

make a web request

• method - the http method to use, eg GET or POST
• uri - the service address to load, either a query string or an http.request compatible object
• body (optional) - the message to send in the body of the request
• callback - function that will be called with the http.IncomingMessage response

Returns via the callback the http response, with res.body set to a Buffer containing the raw unparsed reply message.

The body may be a string, an object, or a Buffer. String is sent as content-type 'text/plain'. Object is json-encoded and sent as 'application/json'. Buffer is sent as binary data as type 'application/octet-stream'.

The call always sets Content-Type to match the body (unless already set), and Content-Length.

    HttpClient = require('qhttp/http-client');
    httpClient = new HttpClient();
    httpClient.call('GET', "http://www.google.com", function(err, res, body) {
        // res.statusCode is the HTTP response status code
        // body == res.body is the HTTP response body, in a Buffer
    });

httpClient.get

httpClient.post

httpClient.put

httpClient.delete

Shortcuts to httpClient.call('GET', ...) etc., similar to request.

    client = require('qhttp/http-client');
    client.get("http://www.google.com", function(err, res, body) {
        console.log(body.toString())
    })

HttpClient.emulateRestifyClient( client )

client.emulateRestifyClient( )

Modify the client HttpClient object for improved restify compatbility. New methods are added, error reporting changes, the response message is decoded into an object, and the get/post etc convenience methods callbacks are called with different arguments.

The methods added to httpClient are:

httpClient.basicAuth( username, password )

Sign requests with an "Authorization: Basic" header out of username:password

httpClient.get( uri, body, callback(err, req, res, obj) )

make a GET request

httpClient.post( uri, body, callback(err, req, res, obj) )

make a POST request

httpClient.put( uri, body, callback(err, req, res, obj) )

make a PUT request

httpClient.delete( uri, body, callback(err, req, res, obj) )

make a DELETE request. For compatbility, can also be called as del.

Related Work

• qhttp/parseUrl - like url.parse, but 4x faster
• querystringparser - like qs, but much faster
• fast-url-parser - like url.parse, but 2x faster
• cookieparser
• agentkeepalive - like httpAgent, but much faster
• qhttp-agent - much faster httpAgent work-alike

ChangeLog

0.6.1

• fix http_parse_query() to decode + into ' ' space

0.6.0

• encode dates as toISOString
• encode only array contents, not array properties

0.5.1

• fix parseUrl export

0.5.0

• fix dev dependency name
• accept the body parameter from the uri object as well

0.4.0

• have the package export a qhttp singleton with methods get, post, etc
• fix Content-Length for multi-byte utf8 characters
• fix header handling to not clobber pre-configured headers at call time
• create() factory method (aka defaults)
• expose singleton call method

0.3.0

• HttpClient:
  • returnBody:false option to not wait for response to arrive
  • auth: options for http basic auth
  • defaults() factory method
  • get, post, put, delete shortcuts
  • fix: do not overwrite user-supplied Content-Type
  • fix: do not call callback twice if req error
  • make unit tests standalone (do not hit localhost:80)
  • expose module-level get, post, etc functions eg require('qhttp/http-client').get(...)
• new qhttp/parse-url function
• switch unit tests from nodeunit to qunit

0.2.2

• return body as third arg of callback

Todo

• maybe have httpClient support streaming responses
• a[]=1&a[]=2 should be parsed into an array [1, 2] like in php
• configure HttpClient decodeResponse function