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

You can also use Requestify, a really cool and simple HTTP client I wrote for nodeJS + it supports caching.

Just do the following:

    var requestify = require('requestify');

    requestify.post('http://example.com', {
        hello: 'world'
    })
    .then(function(response) {
        // Get the response body (JSON parsed or jQuery object for XMLs)
        response.getBody();
    });

Answer 2

By using request dependency.

Simple solution :

 import request from 'request'
 var data = {
        "host":"127.1.1.1",
        "port":9008
    }

request.post( baseUrl + '/peers/connect',
        {
            json: data,  // your payload data placed here
            headers: {
                'X-Api-Key': 'dajzmj6gfuzmbfnhamsbuxivc', // if authentication needed
                'Content-Type': 'application/json' 
            }
        }, function (error, response, body) {
            if (error) {
                callback(error, null)
            } else {
                callback(error, response.body)
            }
        });

Answer 3

If you are looking for promise based HTTP requests, axios does its job nicely.

  const axios = require('axios');

  axios.post('/user', {firstName: 'Fred',lastName: 'Flintstone'})
      .then((response) => console.log(response))
      .catch((error) => console.log(error));

OR

await axios.post('/user', {firstName: 'Fred',lastName: 'Flintstone'})

Answer 4

I like the simplicity of superagent (https://github.com/visionmedia/superagent). Same API on both node and browser.

;(async function() {
  var response = await superagent.post('http://127.0.0.1:8125/', {age: 2})
  console.log(response)
})

There is also node-fetch (https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-fetch), which has an API that matches fetch from the browsers - however this requires manual query string encoding, does not automatically handle content types, or so any of the other work superagent does.

Answer 5

var https = require('https');


/**
 * HOW TO Make an HTTP Call - POST
 */
// do a POST request
// create the JSON object
jsonObject = JSON.stringify({
    "message" : "The web of things is approaching, let do some tests to be ready!",
    "name" : "Test message posted with node.js",
    "caption" : "Some tests with node.js",
    "link" : "http://www.youscada.com",
    "description" : "this is a description",
    "picture" : "http://youscada.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/logo2.png",
    "actions" : [ {
        "name" : "youSCADA",
        "link" : "http://www.youscada.com"
    } ]
});

// prepare the header
var postheaders = {
    'Content-Type' : 'application/json',
    'Content-Length' : Buffer.byteLength(jsonObject, 'utf8')
};

// the post options
var optionspost = {
    host : 'graph.facebook.com',
    port : 443,
    path : '/youscada/feed?access_token=your_api_key',
    method : 'POST',
    headers : postheaders
};

console.info('Options prepared:');
console.info(optionspost);
console.info('Do the POST call');

// do the POST call
var reqPost = https.request(optionspost, function(res) {
    console.log("statusCode: ", res.statusCode);
    // uncomment it for header details
//  console.log("headers: ", res.headers);

    res.on('data', function(d) {
        console.info('POST result:\n');
        process.stdout.write(d);
        console.info('\n\nPOST completed');
    });
});

// write the json data
reqPost.write(jsonObject);
reqPost.end();
reqPost.on('error', function(e) {
    console.error(e);
});

Answer 6

Here's an example of using node.js to make a POST request to the Google Compiler API:

// We need this to build our post string
var querystring = require('querystring');
var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');

function PostCode(codestring) {
  // Build the post string from an object
  var post_data = querystring.stringify({
      'compilation_level' : 'ADVANCED_OPTIMIZATIONS',
      'output_format': 'json',
      'output_info': 'compiled_code',
        'warning_level' : 'QUIET',
        'js_code' : codestring
  });

  // An object of options to indicate where to post to
  var post_options = {
      host: 'closure-compiler.appspot.com',
      port: '80',
      path: '/compile',
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
          'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
          'Content-Length': Buffer.byteLength(post_data)
      }
  };

  // Set up the request
  var post_req = http.request(post_options, function(res) {
      res.setEncoding('utf8');
      res.on('data', function (chunk) {
          console.log('Response: ' + chunk);
      });
  });

  // post the data
  post_req.write(post_data);
  post_req.end();

}

// This is an async file read
fs.readFile('LinkedList.js', 'utf-8', function (err, data) {
  if (err) {
    // If this were just a small part of the application, you would
    // want to handle this differently, maybe throwing an exception
    // for the caller to handle. Since the file is absolutely essential
    // to the program's functionality, we're going to exit with a fatal
    // error instead.
    console.log("FATAL An error occurred trying to read in the file: " + err);
    process.exit(-2);
  }
  // Make sure there's data before we post it
  if(data) {
    PostCode(data);
  }
  else {
    console.log("No data to post");
    process.exit(-1);
  }
});

I've updated the code to show how to post data from a file, instead of the hardcoded string. It uses the async fs.readFile command to achieve this, posting the actual code after a successful read. If there's an error, it is thrown, and if there's no data the process exits with a negative value to indicate failure.