node-http2

An HTTP/2 (RFC 7540) client and server implementation for node.js.

Travis CI status

Installation

npm install http2

API

The API is very similar to the standard node.js HTTPS API. The goal is the perfect API compatibility, with additional HTTP2 related extensions (like server push).

Detailed API documentation is primarily maintained in the lib/http.js file and is available in the wiki as well.

Examples

Using as a server

var options = {
  key: fs.readFileSync('./example/localhost.key'),
  cert: fs.readFileSync('./example/localhost.crt')
};

require('http2').createServer(options, function(request, response) {
  response.end('Hello world!');
}).listen(8080);

Using as a client

require('http2').get('https://localhost:8080/', function(response) {
  response.pipe(process.stdout);
});

Simple static file server

An simple static file server serving up content from its own directory is available in the example directory. Running the server:

$ node ./example/server.js

Simple command line client

An example client is also available. Downloading the server's own source code from the server:

$ node ./example/client.js 'https://localhost:8080/server.js' >/tmp/server.js

Server push

For a server push example, see the source code of the example server and client.

Status

ALPN is only supported in node.js >= 5.0
Upgrade mechanism to start HTTP/2 over unencrypted channel is not implemented yet (issue #4)
Other minor features found in this list are not implemented yet

Development

Development dependencies

There's a few library you will need to have installed to do anything described in the following sections. After installing/cloning node-http2, run npm install in its directory to install development dependencies.

Used libraries:

mocha for tests
chai for assertions
istanbul for code coverage analysis
docco for developer documentation
bunyan for logging

For pretty printing logs, you will also need a global install of bunyan (npm install -g bunyan).

Developer documentation

The developer documentation is generated from the source code using docco and can be viewed online here. If you'd like to have an offline copy, just run npm run-script doc.

Running the tests

It's easy, just run npm test. The tests are written in BDD style, so they are a good starting point to understand the code.

Test coverage

To generate a code coverage report, run npm test --coverage (which runs very slowly, be patient). Code coverage summary as of version 3.0.1:

Statements   : 92.09% ( 1759/1910 )
Branches     : 82.56% ( 696/843 )
Functions    : 91.38% ( 212/232 )
Lines        : 92.17% ( 1753/1902 )

There's a hosted version of the detailed (line-by-line) coverage report here.

Logging

Logging is turned off by default. You can turn it on by passing a bunyan logger as log option when creating a server or agent.

When using the example server or client, it's very easy to turn logging on: set the HTTP2_LOG environment variable to fatal, error, warn, info, debug or trace (the logging level). To log every single incoming and outgoing data chunk, use HTTP2_LOG_DATA=1 besides HTTP2_LOG=trace. Log output goes to the standard error output. If the standard error is redirected into a file, then the log output is in bunyan's JSON format for easier post-mortem analysis.

Running the example server and client with info level logging output:

$ HTTP2_LOG=info node ./example/server.js

$ HTTP2_LOG=info node ./example/client.js 'https://localhost:8080/server.js' >/dev/null

Contributors

The co-maintainer of the project is Nick Hurley.

Code contributions are always welcome! People who contributed to node-http2 so far:

Special thanks to Google for financing the development of this module as part of their Summer of Code program (project: HTTP/2 prototype server implementation), and Nick Hurley of Mozilla, my GSoC mentor, who helped with regular code review and technical advices.