Retrieving the response body from an HttpClientResponse

Question

I\'m trying to write some tests for my Dart server application, and I\'ve been using the HttpClient class (along with the related HttpClientRequest and HttpClientResponse cl

Answer 1

The HttpClientResponse object is a Stream, so you can just read it with the listen() method:

response.listen((List<int> data) {
  //data as bytes
});

You can also use the codecs from dart:convert to parse the data. The following example reads the response contents to a String:

import 'dart:io';
import 'dart:convert';
import 'dart:async';

Future<String> readResponse(HttpClientResponse response) {
  final completer = Completer<String>();
  final contents = StringBuffer();
  response.transform(utf8.decoder).listen((data) {
    contents.write(data);
  }, onDone: () => completer.complete(contents.toString()));
  return completer.future;
}

Answer 2

Low level

Here is the await for version of collecting the response stream. It's a little more compact than using a completer.

Future<String> readResponse(HttpClientResponse response) async {
  final contents = StringBuffer();
  await for (var data in response.transform(utf8.decoder)) {
    contents.write(data);
  }
  return contents.toString();
}

You should wrap it in a try catch block to handle errors.

High level

Most of the time from the client side you would use the http library instead:

// import 'package:http/http.dart';

Response response = await get(url);
String content = response.body;

See this article for more details.