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 forObject.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 theundefined): Try to provide partial data beforeoptions.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 underlyingmessage.httpVersionmessage.rawHeaders is modified by the browser, and may not quite match what is sent bymessage.trailers and message.rawTrailers will remain empty.timeout event/option and setTimeout functions, which operate on the underlyingoptions.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 tohttp://localhost:8080/__zuul
MIT. Copyright (C) John Hiesey and other contributors.