Package Exports

needle

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Readme

Needle

The most handsome HTTP client in the Nodelands. Supports SSL, basic auth, requests via proxy, multipart form-data (e.g. file uploads), gzip/deflate compression and, as you would expect, follows redirects. Simple, nimble and to the point.

Usage

var needle = require('needle');

needle.get('http://www.google.com', function(err, resp, body){
  console.log("Got status code: " + resp.statusCode);
});

Install

npm install needle

Options

timeout: Returns error if response takes more than X milisecs. Defaults to 10000 (10 secs). 0 means no timeout.
follow: When false, Needle won't follow redirects. Can also be a number or true (the default, 10 max).
compressed: Whether to ask for a deflated or gzipped response or not. Defaults to false.
decode: Whether to decode response to UTF-8 if Content-Type charset is different. Defaults to true.
parse: Whether to parse XML or JSON response bodies automagically. Defaults to true.
multipart: Enables multipart/form-data encoding. Defaults to false.
username: For HTTP basic auth.
password: For HTTP basic auth. Requires username to be passed, obviously.
agent: Uses an http.Agent of your choice, instead of the global (default) one.
proxy: Forwards request through HTTP proxy. Eg. proxy: 'http://proxy.server.com:3128'

Methods

needle.get(url, [options], callback);
needle.head(url, [options], callback);
needle.post(url, data, [options], callback);
needle.put(url, data, [options], callback);
needle.delete(url, [options], callback);

Callback receives three arguments: (error, response, body)

Examples

GET with querystring

needle.get('http://www.google.com/search?q=syd+barrett', function(err, resp, body){
  if(!err && resp.statusCode == 200)
    console.log(body); // prints HTML
});

HTTPS GET with Basic Auth

needle.get('https://api.server.com', { username: 'you', password: 'secret' },
  function(err, resp, body){
    // used HTTP auth
});

More options

var options = {
  timeout: false,
  compressed : true,
  parse: true,
  headers: {
    'X-Custom-Header': "Bumbaway atuna"
  }
}

needle.get('server.com/posts.json', options, function(err, resp, body){
  // Needle prepends 'http://' to the URL if not found
});

GET through proxy

needle.get('http://search.npmjs.org', { proxy: 'http://localhost:1234' }, function(err, resp, body){
  // request passed through proxy
});

Simple POST

needle.post('https://my.app.com/endpoint', 'foo=bar', function(err, resp, body){
  // you can pass params as a string or as an object
});

PUT with data object

var nested = {
  params: {
    are: {
      also: 'supported'
    }
  }
}

needle.put('https://api.app.com/v2', nested, function(err, resp, body){
  // if you don't pass any data, needle will throw an exception.
});

File upload using multipart, passing file path

var data = {
  foo: 'bar',
  image: { file: '/home/tomas/linux.png', content_type: 'image/png' }
}

needle.post('http://my.other.app.com', data, { multipart: true }, function(err, resp, body){
  // needle will read the file and include it in the form-data as binary
});

Multipart POST, passing data buffer

var buffer = fs.readFileSync('/path/to/package.zip');
var data = {
  zip_file: {
    buffer: buffer,
    filename: 'mypackage.zip',
    content_type: 'application/octet-stream'
  },
}

needle.post('http://somewhere.com/over/the/rainbow', data, { multipart: true }, function(err, resp, body){
  // if you see, when using buffers we need to pass the filename for the multipart body.
  // you can also pass a filename when using the file path method, in case you want to override
  // the default filename to be received on the other end.
});

Multipart with custom Content-Type

var data = {
  token: 'verysecret',
  payload: {
    value: JSON.stringify({ title: 'test', version: 1 }),
    content_type: 'application/json'
  }
}

needle.post('http://test.com/', data, { timeout: 5000, multipart: true }, function(err, resp, body){
  // in this case, if the request takes more than 5 seconds
  // the callback will return a [Socket closed] error
});

Credits

Written by Tomás Pollak, with the help of contributors.

needle