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doc: better example for http.get #9065

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doc: better example for http.get
marzelin Oct 12, 2016
dd28020
change generic example to json fetching example
marzelin Oct 13, 2016
1b4c0f8
fix style and add try catch around json.parse
marzelin Oct 13, 2016
918bb38
change url to nodejs.org host
marzelin Oct 14, 2016
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45 changes: 38 additions & 7 deletions doc/api/http.md
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Expand Up @@ -1354,16 +1354,47 @@ added: v0.3.6
-->

Since most requests are GET requests without bodies, Node.js provides this
convenience method. The only difference between this method and [`http.request()`][]
is that it sets the method to GET and calls `req.end()` automatically.
convenience method. The only difference between this method and
[`http.request()`][] is that it sets the method to GET and calls `req.end()`
automatically. Note that response data must be consumed in the callback
for reasons stated in [`http.ClientRequest`][] section.

Example:
The `callback` is invoked with a single argument that is an instance of
[`http.IncomingMessage`][]

JSON Fetching Example:

```js
http.get('http://www.google.com/index.html', (res) => {
console.log(`Got response: ${res.statusCode}`);
// consume response body
res.resume();
http.get('http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1', (res) => {
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@mscdex mscdex Oct 14, 2016 •
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I wonder if we should just use a fake URL, like 'http://example.org/posts/1.json' or something? That way we have more consistency/reliability (e.g. example.org is always a reserved domain name and will never go away). The example.org url won't actually work of course, but I'm not sure that's important.

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@Nibbler999 Nibbler999 Oct 14, 2016

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Could point to https://nodejs.org/dist/index.json

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@marzelin marzelin Oct 14, 2016

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Fetching data from nodejs.org would be great but it has to be through http. I'd prefer having a working example. jsonplaceholder.typicode.com is quite reliable and commonly used for testing and prototyping, so I'd rather keep it.

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@lpinca lpinca Oct 14, 2016

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Note that plain http also works for nodejs.org: http://nodejs.org/dist/index.json.

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@marzelin marzelin Oct 14, 2016

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It does work. Great 👍

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@mscdex mscdex Oct 14, 2016

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Let's hope that nodejs.org never forces https via redirect or similar ;-)

const statusCode = res.statusCode;
const contentType = res.headers['content-type'];

let error;
if (statusCode !== 200) {
error = new Error(`Request Failed.\n` +
`Status Code: ${statusCode}`);
} else if (!/^application\/json/.test(contentType)) {
error = new Error(`Invalid content-type.\n` +
`Expected application/json but received ${contentType}`);
}
if (error) {
console.log(error.message);
// consume response data to free up memory
res.resume();
return;
}

res.setEncoding('utf8');
let rawData = '';
res.on('data', (chunk) => rawData += chunk);
res.on('end', () => {
try {
let parsedData = JSON.parse(rawData);
console.log(parsedData);
} catch (e) {
console.log(e.message);
}
});
}).on('error', (e) => {
console.log(`Got error: ${e.message}`);
});
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