How is an HTTP POST request made in node.js?

Question

How can I make an outbound HTTP POST request, with data, in node.js?

Answer 1

After struggling a lot while creating a low level utility to handle the post and get requests for my project, I decided to post my effort here. Much on the lines of accepted answer, here is a snippet for making http and https POST requests for sending JSON data.

const http = require("http")
const https = require("https")

// Request handler function
let postJSON = (options, postData, callback) => {

    // Serializing JSON
    post_data = JSON.stringify(postData)

    let port = options.port == 443 ? https : http

    // Callback function for the request
    let req = port.request(options, (res) => {
        let output = ''
        res.setEncoding('utf8')

        // Listener to receive data
        res.on('data', (chunk) => {
            output += chunk
        });

        // Listener for intializing callback after receiving complete response
        res.on('end', () => {
            let obj = JSON.parse(output)
            callback(res.statusCode, obj)
        });
    });

   // Handle any errors occurred while making request
    req.on('error', (err) => {
        //res.send('error: ' + err.message)
    });

    // Request is made here, with data as string or buffer
    req.write(post_data)
    // Ending the request
    req.end()
};

let callPost = () => {

    let data = {
        'name': 'Jon',
        'message': 'hello, world'
    }

    let options = {
        host: 'domain.name',       // Your domain name
        port: 443,                 // 443 for https and 80 for http
        path: '/path/to/resource', // Path for the request
        method: 'POST',            
        headers: {
            'Content-Type': 'application/json',
            'Content-Length': Buffer.byteLength(data)
        }
    }

    postJSON(options, data, (statusCode, result) => {
        // Handle response
        // Process the received data
    });

}