Difference between http.get and http.request #452

espruino-discuss · 2025-02-10T18:01:31Z

espruino-discuss
Feb 10, 2025
Maintainer

Posted at 2015-09-21 by Tobbe

I had problems doing a POST, so I started playing around with http.request and noticed that it behaves differently from http.get. Why is that?

This is the code I have

var http = require('http');

function callback(response) {
  var str = '';

  response.on('data', function (chunk) {
    str += chunk;
  });

  response.on('close', function () {
    console.log(str);
  });
}

function getDataUsingGet() {
  http.get('http://example.com', callback);
}

function getDataUsingRequest() {
  var options = {
    host: 'example.com',
    method: 'get'
  };

  http.request(options, callback).end();
}

Calling getDataUsingGet() I get the same reply as I do when I visit using my web browser. But calling getDataUsingRequest() I get

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
         "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>501 - Not Implemented</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>501 - Not Implemented</h1>
</body>
</html>

And changing method: 'get' to method: 'GET' the reply I receive is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
         "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<title>400 - Bad Request</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>400 - Bad Request</h1>
</body>
</html>

How can I use http.request to get the same page as http.get() gets me? Why do I get different responses when using 'get' and 'GET'?

gfwilliams · 2025-02-10T18:01:33Z

gfwilliams
Feb 10, 2025
Maintainer

Posted at 2015-09-22 by @gfwilliams

Try:

  var options = {
    host: 'example.com',
    path: '/',
    method: 'GET'
  };
  http.request(options, callback).end();

I think the issue is that the path isn't specified, so it's asking the server for a page called "", which it complains about.

If you used var options = url.parse('http://example.com') it'd neatly populate everything you need for you.

Why do I get different responses when using 'get' and 'GET'?

Because that string is being sent to the HTTP server as-is, and the HTTP server is case-sensitive. Espruino doesn't convert it to upper-case for you just in case you're trying to do something non-standard with an HTTP server.

I'll add something to the docs on it.

0 replies

espruino-discuss · 2025-02-10T18:01:36Z

espruino-discuss
Feb 10, 2025
Maintainer Author

Posted at 2015-09-22 by Tobbe

Yes, please do update the docs :) The whole options object could use some documentation improvements :)

Just noticed that for http.request it says

options An object containing host,port,path,method,headers fields

And for url.parse it says

An object containing options for http.request or http.get. Contains method, host, path, pathname, search, port and query

So url.parse returns a bunch of options (pathname, search, query) not mentioned as supported in http.request (or http.get)

Could you please try to clarify that?

0 replies

gfwilliams · 2025-02-10T18:01:39Z

gfwilliams
Feb 10, 2025
Maintainer

Posted at 2015-09-22 by @gfwilliams

Yes, pathname, search and query aren't used by http.request or get, but they're useful if you're making your own web server and want to parse out the arguments.

There are a bunch of examples under the Examples heading that show how you'd use it.

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