Requiem

A simple, dependency-free wrapper around Node's HTTP request functionality.

Using http and/or https is annoying, hence the existence of other libraries like request, axios, got, etc. Those are all very full-featured, with many bells and whistles.

requiem simply makes working with http.request more convenient.

requiem is not browser-compatible; it is meant for Node.JS environments only.

Features

• Follow redirects (configurable via followRedirects configuration option)
• Timeouts will throw errors, don't have to abort the request yourself (configurable via timeout configuration option)
• Supports all configuration parameters you can pass to https.request()
• Streaming
• Promise-based
• First-class JSON support
• First-class TypeScript support
• Reverse proxy
• Automatically throw based on status code (configurable via throwOnErrorResponse configuration option)

Installation

npm install requiem-http
# or
yarn add requiem-http

Example usage

const requiem = require('requiem-http');

// GET the response body as a Buffer
requiem.requestBody('https://example.com/')
  .then((res) => console.log(res.body.toString('utf8')))
  .catch((err) => console.error(err));

// get the raw HTTP request and do whatever with it (e.g. for streaming)
requiem.request('https://example.com/')
  .then((res) => {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      res.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('./example.html'))
        .on('error', reject)
        .on('finish', resolve);
      });
    })
  .catch((err) => console.error(err));

// get the response body as JSON
requiem.requestJson('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1')
  .then((res) => console.log(res.body))
  .catch((err) => console.error(err));

// POST a JSON body
const postJsonOptions = {
  url: 'https://example.com/',
  method: 'POST',
  bodyJson: {
    hello: 'world'
  }
};
requiem.request(postJsonOptions)
  .then((res) => console.log(res.statusCode))
  .catch((err) => console.error(err));

// POST a Buffer/string
const postBufferOptions = {
  url: 'https://example.com/',
  method: 'POST',
  body: 'hello world'
};
requiem.request(postBufferOptions)
  .then((res) => console.log(res.statusCode))
  .catch((err) => console.error(err));

// request a URL but only redirect twice
// an error is thrown with code "TooManyRedirects" if the redirect limit is reached
const limitedRedirectOptions = {
  url: 'https://example.com/',
  followRedirects: 2
};
requiem.requestBody(limitedRedirectOptions)
  .then((res) => console.log(res.body.toString('utf8')))
  .catch((err) => console.error(err));

// request a URL and don't redirect at all
const noRedirectOptions = {
  url: 'https://example.com/',
  followRedirects: false
};
requiem.request(noRedirectOptions)
  .then((res) => console.log(res.statusCode)) // e.g. "302"
  .catch((err) => console.error(err));


// request a URL and throw if the status is >= 400
// an error is thrown with code "InvalidStatusCode" if status >= 400
const throwOnErrorOptions = {
  url: 'https://example.com/',
  throwOnErrorResponse: true
};
requiem.requestBody(throwOnErrorOptions)
  .then((res) => console.log(res.body.toString('utf8')))
  .catch((err) => console.error(err));

// act as reverse proxy (will set all headers/status code on outgoing response)
const app = express();
app.get('/test', async (req, outgoingRes) => {
  const proxiedUrl = req.query.url;
  const incomingRes = await requiem.request(proxiedUrl);
  incomingRes.reverseProxy(outgoingRes);
});

API

All functions take the exact same arguments: an options object:

interface RequiemOptions {
  // specifying the URL to request
  url: string; // required if "host" is not set
  host: string; // required if "url" is not set
  path?: string;
  port?: string;
  protocol?: string;

  // request body (only one of "body" and "bodyJson" may be set)
  body?: string | Buffer;
  bodyJson?: any; // this will automatically set "Content-Type: application/json" for you

  method?: string; // defaults to 'GET'

  // convenience options
  followRedirects?: number; // max number of redirects to follow (defaults to 5)
  throwOnErrorResponse?: boolean | number; // if boolean, throw if response status is >= 400
                                           // if number, throw if response status is not an exact match
                                           // default is "false"

  // all other builtin HTTP/HTTPS options for http.request() or https.request()
  auth?: string;
  agent?: http.Agent | boolean;
  headers?: any;
  timeout?: number;
  rejectUnauthorized?: boolean;
  ciphers?: string;
  // ...
}

.request(options: RequiemOptions): Promise<RequiemResponse>

Creates and sends a request. Returns the response. Most useful for streaming or otherwise handling the response yourself.

The response body is not consumed.

RequiemResponse is the following:

interface RequiemResponse extends http.IncomingMessage {
  requestedUrl: string;
  reverseProxy: (outgoing: http.ServerResponse) => http.IncomingMEssage;
}

For convenience, you can use the reverseProxy method to pipe the response to another ServerResponse instance. This will propagate the statusCode as well as all headers from the proxied response.

For other streaming uses (e.g. streaming to a local file) just use the built-in .pipe() method explicitly.

.requestBody(options: RequiemOptions): Promise<RequiemResponseWithBody<Buffer>>

Sends a request, consumes the response body, and returns the response with the body attached as a Buffer:

interface RequiemResponseWithBody extends RequiemResponse {
  body: Buffer;
}

.requestJson<T = any>(options: RequiemOptions): Promise<RequiemResponseWithBody<T>>

Sends a request, consumes the response body, parses the body as JSON via JSON.parse and returns the response with the body attached as the parsed JSON object.

If the response is not valid JSON, an error is thrown with code InvalidJsonBody.

interface RequiemResponseWithBody<T> extends RequiemResponse {
  body: T;
}

Lower-level APIs

Not recommended for frequent usage, but these APIs are available for more fine-grained control over the request lifecycle.

Example:

const shouldAbortRequest = () => {
  // some kind of logic here
  return true;
};

const options = {
  url: 'https://example.com/',
  followRedirects: 5
};
const req = requiem.createRequest(options);
req.on('abort', () => console.log('request aborted'));
const intervalId = setInterval(() => {
  if (shouldAbortRequest()) {
    req.abort();
    clearInterval(intervalId);
  }
}, 500);

requiem.sendRequest(req, options)
  .then((res) => console.log('request was not aborted'))
  .catch((err) => console.error(err.message))
  .finally(() => clearInterval(intervalId));

.createRequest(options: RequiemOptions): RequiemRequest

Creates a request object, but does not send it. Useful for aborting a request if necessary.

interface RequiemRequest extends http.ClientRequest {
  requestedUrl: string;
}

.sendRequest(req: RequiemRequest, options: RequiemOptions): Promise<RequiemResponse>

Sends a request created by createRequest() manually.