94

I have a Node.js application that is an http client (at the moment). So I'm doing:

var query = require('querystring').stringify(propertiesObject);
http.get(url + query, function(res) {
   console.log("Got response: " + res.statusCode);
}).on('error', function(e) {
    console.log("Got error: " + e.message);
});

This seems like a good enough way to accomplish this. However I'm somewhat miffed that I had to do the url + query step. This should be encapsulated by a common library, but I don't see this existing in node's http library yet and I'm not sure what standard npm package might accomplish it. Is there a reasonably widely used way that's better?

url.format method saves the work of building own URL. But ideally the request will be higher level than this also.

2

6 Answers 6

168

Check out the request module.

It's more full featured than node's built-in http client.

var request = require('request');

var propertiesObject = { field1:'test1', field2:'test2' };

request({url:url, qs:propertiesObject}, function(err, response, body) {
  if(err) { console.log(err); return; }
  console.log("Get response: " + response.statusCode);
});
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4 Comments

How would a typical propertiesObject look? I cant get this to work
The qs is the query string key. So what ever fields you want in the query string. {field1:'test1',field2:'test2'}
Request module is now out dated and deprecated.
Perfect example on why you should avoid using npm packages for simple tasks. People tend to "npm install X" pretty fast instead of thinking a bit. That's why "is-even" is a real package with thousands of installs.
38

No need for a 3rd party library. Use the nodejs url module to build a URL with query parameters:

const requestUrl = url.parse(url.format({
    protocol: 'https',
    hostname: 'yoursite.com',
    pathname: '/the/path',
    query: {
        key: value
    }
}));

Then make the request with the formatted url. requestUrl.path will include the query parameters.

const req = https.get({
    hostname: requestUrl.hostname,
    path: requestUrl.path,
}, (res) => {
   // ...
})

1 Comment

I am going to try and use this solution because I would like to use some existing code which uses the built-in https, however the OP asked for higher-level abstraction and/or libraries for composing URL strings with queries, so I think the accepted answer is more valid personally
8

If you don't want use external package , Just add the following function in your utilities :

var params=function(req){
  let q=req.url.split('?'),result={};
  if(q.length>=2){
      q[1].split('&').forEach((item)=>{
           try {
             result[item.split('=')[0]]=item.split('=')[1];
           } catch (e) {
             result[item.split('=')[0]]='';
           }
      })
  }
  return result;
}

Then , in createServer call back , add attribute params to request object :

 http.createServer(function(req,res){
     req.params=params(req); // call the function above ;
      /**
       * http://mysite/add?name=Ahmed
       */
     console.log(req.params.name) ; // display : "Ahmed"

})

2 Comments

The OP's question concerns http clients, not http servers. This answer is relevant for parsing query strings in an http server, not encoding query strings for an http request.
This is doing the opposite of what the question was asking about, and also it's better to use Node's built-in querystring module rather than trying to parse this yourself.
6

I have been struggling with how to add query string parameters to my URL. I couldn't make it work until I realized that I needed to add ? at the end of my URL, otherwise it won't work. This is very important as it will save you hours of debugging, believe me: been there...done that.

Below, is a simple API Endpoint that calls the Open Weather API and passes APPID, lat and lon as query parameters and return weather data as a JSON object. Hope this helps.

//Load the request module
var request = require('request');

//Load the query String module
var querystring = require('querystring');

// Load OpenWeather Credentials
var OpenWeatherAppId = require('../config/third-party').openWeather;

router.post('/getCurrentWeather', function (req, res) {
    var urlOpenWeatherCurrent = 'http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?'
    var queryObject = {
        APPID: OpenWeatherAppId.appId,
        lat: req.body.lat,
        lon: req.body.lon
    }
    console.log(queryObject)
    request({
        url:urlOpenWeatherCurrent,
        qs: queryObject
    }, function (error, response, body) {
        if (error) {
            console.log('error:', error); // Print the error if one occurred

        } else if(response && body) {
            console.log('statusCode:', response && response.statusCode); // Print the response status code if a response was received
            res.json({'body': body}); // Print JSON response.
        }
    })
})  

Or if you want to use the querystring module, make the following changes

var queryObject = querystring.stringify({
    APPID: OpenWeatherAppId.appId,
    lat: req.body.lat,
    lon: req.body.lon
});

request({
   url:urlOpenWeatherCurrent + queryObject
}, function (error, response, body) {...})

Comments

2

If you ever need to send GET request to an IP as well as a Domain (Other answers did not mention you can specify a port variable), you can make use of this function:

function getCode(host, port, path, queryString) {
    console.log("(" + host + ":" + port + path + ")" + "Running httpHelper.getCode()")

    // Construct url and query string
    const requestUrl = url.parse(url.format({
        protocol: 'http',
        hostname: host,
        pathname: path,
        port: port,
        query: queryString
    }));

    console.log("(" + host + path + ")" + "Sending GET request")
    // Send request
    console.log(url.format(requestUrl))
    http.get(url.format(requestUrl), (resp) => {
        let data = '';

        // A chunk of data has been received.
        resp.on('data', (chunk) => {
            console.log("GET chunk: " + chunk);
            data += chunk;
        });

        // The whole response has been received. Print out the result.
        resp.on('end', () => {
            console.log("GET end of response: " + data);
        });

    }).on("error", (err) => {
        console.log("GET Error: " + err);
    });
}

Don't miss requiring modules at the top of your file:

http = require("http");
url = require('url')

Also bare in mind that you may use https module for communicating over secured network.

Comments

-2
const { URL } = require('url');
const reqUrl = new URL(req.url, `http://${req.headers.host}`);
const query = reqUrl.searchParams;

1 Comment

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