This module is an implementation of Node's native http
module for the browser.
It tries to match Node's API and behavior as closely as possible, but some features
aren't available, since browsers don't give nearly as much control over requests.
This is heavily inspired by, and intended to replace, http-browserify.
In accordance with its name, stream-http
tries to provide data to its caller before
the request has completed whenever possible.
Backpressure, allowing the browser to only pull data from the server as fast as it is
consumed, is supported in:
* Chrome >= 58 (using fetch
and WritableStream
)
The following browsers support true streaming, where only a small amount of the request
has to be held in memory at once:
Chrome >= 43 (using the fetch
API)
Firefox >= 9 (using moz-chunked-arraybuffer
responseType with xhr)
The following browsers support pseudo-streaming, where the data is available before the request finishes, but the entire response must be held in memory: Chrome Safari >= 5, and maybe older IE >= 10 Most other Webkit-based browsers, including the default Android browser
All browsers newer than IE8 support binary responses. All of the above browsers that support true streaming or pseudo-streaming support that for binary data as well except for IE10. Old (presto-based) Opera also does not support binary streaming either.
As of version 2.0.0, IE8 support requires the user to supply polyfills for
Object.keys
, Array.prototype.forEach
, and Array.prototype.indexOf
. Example
implementations are provided in ie8-polyfill.js; alternately,
you may want to consider using es5-shim.
All browsers with full ES5 support shouldn't require any polyfills.
The intent is to have the same API as the client part of the Node HTTP module. The interfaces are the same wherever practical, although limitations in browsers make an exact clone of the Node API impossible.
This module implements http.request
, http.get
, and most of http.ClientRequest
and http.IncomingMessage
in addition to http.METHODS
and http.STATUS_CODES
. See the
Node docs for how these work.
The message.url
property provides access to the final URL after all redirects. This
is useful since the browser follows all redirects silently, unlike Node. It is available
in Chrome 37 and newer, Firefox 32 and newer, and Safari 9 and newer.
The options.withCredentials
boolean flag, used to indicate if the browser should send
cookies or authentication information with a CORS request. Default false.
This module has to make some tradeoffs to support binary data and/or streaming. Generally, the module can make a fairly good decision about which underlying browser features to use, but sometimes it helps to get a little input from the developer.
options.mode
field passed into http.request
or http.get
can take on one of the
following values:undefined
): Try to provide partial data before
the request completes, but not at the cost of correctness for binary data or correctness of
the 'content-type' response header. This mode will also avoid slower code paths whenever
possible, which is particularly useful when making large requests in a browser like Safari
that has a weaker JavaScript engine.'prefer-fast': Deprecated; now a synonym for 'default', which has the same performance characteristics as this mode did in versions before 1.5.
options.requestTimeout
allows setting a timeout in millisecionds for XHR and fetch (if
supported by the browser). This is a limit on how long the entire process takes from
beginning to end. Note that this is not the same as the node setTimeout
functions,
which apply to pauses in data transfer over the underlying socket, or the node timeout
option, which applies to opening the connection.
http.Agent
is only a stubhttp.ClientRequest
.request.setTimeout
, that operate directly on the underlying
socket.message.httpVersion
message.rawHeaders
is modified by the browser, and may not quite match what is sent by
the server.message.trailers
and message.rawTrailers
will remain empty.timeout
event/option and setTimeout
functions, which operate on the underlying
socket, are not available. However, see options.requestTimeout
above.http.get('/bundle.js', function (res) {
var div = document.getElementById('result');
div.innerHTML += 'GET /beep<br>';
res.on('data', function (buf) {
div.innerHTML += buf;
});
res.on('end', function () {
div.innerHTML += '<br>__END__';
});
})
There are two sets of tests: the tests that run in Node (found in test/node
) and the tests
that run in the browser (found in test/browser
). Normally the browser tests run on
Sauce Labs.
Running npm test
will run both sets of tests, but in order for the Sauce Labs tests to run
you will need to sign up for an account (free for open source projects) and put the
credentials in a .zuulrc
file.
To run just the Node tests, run npm run test-node
.
To run the browser tests locally, run npm run test-browser-local
and point your browser to
http://localhost:8080/__zuul
MIT. Copyright (C) John Hiesey and other contributors.
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