urllib

Request HTTP URLs in a complex world — basic and digest authentication, redirections, timeout and more.

Install

npm install urllib

Usage

TypeScript and ESM

import { request } from 'urllib';

const { data, res } = await request('http://cnodejs.org/');
// result: { data: Buffer, res: Response }
console.log('status: %s, body size: %d, headers: %j', res.status, data.length, res.headers);

CommonJS

const { request } = require('urllib');

const { data, res } = await request('http://cnodejs.org/');
// result: { data: Buffer, res: Response }
console.log('status: %s, body size: %d, headers: %j', res.status, data.length, res.headers);

API Doc

Method: `async request(url[, options])`

Arguments

url String | Object - The URL to request, either a String or a Object that return by url.parse.
options Object - Optional
- method String - Request method, defaults to GET. Could be GET, POST, DELETE or PUT. Alias 'type'.
- data Object - Data to be sent. Will be stringify automatically.
- content String | Buffer - Manually set the content of payload. If set, data will be ignored.
- stream stream.Readable - Stream to be pipe to the remote. If set, data and content will be ignored.
- writeStream stream.Writable - A writable stream to be piped by the response stream. Responding data will be write to this stream and callback will be called with data set null after finished writing.
- files {Array<ReadStream|Buffer|String> | Object | ReadStream | Buffer | String - The files will send with multipart/form-data format, base on formstream. If method not set, will use POST method by default.
- contentType String - Type of request data. Could be json (Notes: not use application/json here). If it's json, will auto set Content-Type: application/json header.
- dataType String - Type of response data. Could be text or json. If it's text, the callbacked data would be a String. If it's json, the data of callback would be a parsed JSON Object and will auto set Accept: application/json header. Default callbacked data would be a Buffer.
- fixJSONCtlChars Boolean - Fix the control characters (U+0000 through U+001F) before JSON parse response. Default is false.
- headers Object - Request headers.
- timeout Number | Array - Request timeout in milliseconds for connecting phase and response receiving phase. Default is 5000. You can use timeout: 5000 to tell urllib use same timeout on two phase or set them seperately such as timeout: [3000, 5000], which will set connecting timeout to 3s and response 5s.
- keepAliveTimeout number | null - Default is 4000, 4 seconds - The timeout after which a socket without active requests will time out. Monitors time between activity on a connected socket. This value may be overridden by keep-alive hints from the server. See MDN: HTTP - Headers - Keep-Alive directives for more details.
- auth String - username:password used in HTTP Basic Authorization.
- digestAuth String - username:password used in HTTP Digest Authorization.
- followRedirect Boolean - follow HTTP 3xx responses as redirects. defaults to true.
- maxRedirects Number - The maximum number of redirects to follow, defaults to 10.
- formatRedirectUrl Function - Format the redirect url by your self. Default is url.resolve(from, to).
- beforeRequest Function - Before request hook, you can change every thing here.
- streaming Boolean - let you get the res object when request connected, default false. alias customResponse
- compressed Boolean - Accept gzip, br response content and auto decode it, default is true.
- timing Boolean - Enable timing or not, default is true.
- socketPath String | null - request a unix socket service, default is null.
- highWaterMark Number - default is 67108864, 64 KiB.

Options: `options.data`

When making a request:

await request('https://example.com', {
  method: 'GET',
  data: {
    'a': 'hello',
    'b': 'world',
  },
});

For GET request, data will be stringify to query string, e.g. http://example.com/?a=hello&b=world.

For others like POST, PATCH or PUT request, in defaults, the data will be stringify into application/x-www-form-urlencoded format if content-type header is not set.

If content-type is application/json, the data will be JSON.stringify to JSON data format.

Options: `options.content`

options.content is useful when you wish to construct the request body by yourself, for example making a content-type: application/json request.

Notes that if you want to send a JSON body, you should stringify it yourself:

await request('https://example.com', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  },
  content: JSON.stringify({
    a: 'hello',
    b: 'world',
  }),
});

It would make a HTTP request like:

POST / HTTP/1.1
host: example.com
content-type: application/json

{
  "a": "hello",
  "b": "world"
}

This exmaple can use options.data with application/json content type:

await request('https://example.com', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'content-type': 'application/json'
  },
  data: {
    a: 'hello',
    b: 'world',
  }
});

Options: `options.files`

Upload a file with a hello field.

await request('https://example.com/upload', {
  method: 'POST',
  files: __filename,
  data: {
    hello: 'hello urllib',
  },
});

Upload multi files with a hello field.

await request('https://example.com/upload', {
  method: 'POST',
  files: [
    __filename,
    fs.createReadStream(__filename),
    Buffer.from('mock file content'),
  ],
  data: {
    hello: 'hello urllib with multi files',
  },
});

Custom file field name with uploadfile.

await request('https://example.com/upload', {
  method: 'POST',
  files: {
    uploadfile: __filename,
  },
});

Response Object

Response is normal object, it contains:

status or statusCode: response status code.
- -1 meaning some network error like ENOTFOUND
- -2 meaning ConnectionTimeoutError
headers: response http headers, default is {}
size: response size
aborted: response was aborted or not
rt: total request and response time in ms.
timing: timing object if timing enable.
socket: socket info

Run test with debug log

NODE_DEBUG=urllib:* npm test

Mocking Request

export from undici

import { strict as assert } from 'assert';
import { MockAgent, setGlobalDispatcher, request } from 'urllib';

const mockAgent = new MockAgent();
setGlobalDispatcher(mockAgent);

const mockPool = mockAgent.get('http://localhost:7001');

mockPool.intercept({
  path: '/foo',
  method: 'POST',
}).reply(400, {
  message: 'mock 400 bad request',
});

const response = await request('http://localhost:7001/foo', {
  method: 'POST',
  dataType: 'json',
});
assert.equal(response.status, 400);
assert.deepEqual(response.data, { message: 'mock 400 bad request' });

Request through a http proxy

export from undici

import { ProxyAgent, request } from 'urllib';

const proxyAgent = new ProxyAgent('http://my.proxy.com:8080');
const response = await request('https://www.npmjs.com/package/urllib', {
  dispatcher: proxyAgent,
});
console.log(response.status, response.headers);

Benchmarks

Fork undici benchmarks script

Connections 1

Tests	Samples	Result	Tolerance	Difference with slowest
http - no keepalive	15	6.38 req/sec	± 2.44 %	-
http - keepalive	10	6.77 req/sec	± 2.35 %	+ 6.13 %
urllib2 - request	45	40.13 req/sec	± 2.88 %	+ 528.66 %
urllib3 - request	10	58.51 req/sec	± 2.52 %	+ 816.64 %
undici - pipeline	5	59.12 req/sec	± 2.47 %	+ 826.18 %
undici - fetch	15	60.42 req/sec	± 3.00 %	+ 846.60 %
undici - dispatch	5	60.58 req/sec	± 1.39 %	+ 848.99 %
undici - stream	5	61.30 req/sec	± 1.31 %	+ 860.39 %
undici - request	5	61.74 req/sec	± 2.03 %	+ 867.20 %

Connections 50

Tests	Samples	Result	Tolerance	Difference with slowest
urllib2 - request	51	1465.40 req/sec	± 14.40 %	-
undici - fetch	40	3121.10 req/sec	± 2.82 %	+ 112.99 %
http - no keepalive	45	3355.42 req/sec	± 2.84 %	+ 128.98 %
http - keepalive	51	5179.55 req/sec	± 36.61 %	+ 253.46 %
urllib3 - request	30	7045.86 req/sec	± 2.93 %	+ 380.82 %
undici - pipeline	50	8306.92 req/sec	± 2.99 %	+ 466.87 %
undici - request	51	9552.59 req/sec	± 13.13 %	+ 551.88 %
undici - stream	45	12523.45 req/sec	± 2.97 %	+ 754.61 %
undici - dispatch	51	12970.18 req/sec	± 3.15 %	+ 785.10 %

Contributors

_fengmk2	_dead-horse	_{semantic-release-bot}	_xingrz	_popomore	_JacksonTian
_ibigbug	_{greenkeeperio-bot}	_atian25	_killagu	_paambaati	_tremby
_denghongcai	_gemwuu	_XadillaX	_alsotang	_leoner	_hyj1991
_isayme	_cyjake	_whxaxes	_chadxz	_adapt0	_danielwpz
_danielsss	_Jeff-Tian	_nick-ng	_rishavsharan	_willizm	_davidkhala
_aleafs	_Amunu	_{azure-pipelines[bot]}	_capsice	_changzhiwin	_yuzhigang33
_elrrrrrrr	_fishbar	_gxcsoccer	_mars-coder	_rockdai	_dickeylth