@destinationstransfers/fetch

It's a fork of node-fetch-npm that is a fork of node-fetch used in npm itself, through make-fetch-happen. Our goal is to go even more ahead of NPM and drop support for older versions of Node to enjoy latest language features and performance.

Motivation

While we will be trying to keep API as much compatible with whatwg-fetch as possible the main goal is performance and server-side features.

Features

• Stay consistent with window.fetch API
• Make conscious trade-off when following whatwg fetch spec and stream spec implementation details, document known difference.
• Use native promise
• Use native stream for body, on both request and response.
• Decode content encoding (gzip/deflate) properly, and convert string output (such as res.text() and res.json()) to UTF-8 automatically.
• Useful extensions such as timeout, redirect limit, response size limit, [explicit errors][] for troubleshooting.

Difference from node-fetch

• Implementing HTTP2 support from native Node 8.4 support
• Implements Brotli compression support
• Moved tests to Jest and decreased library size
• Dropped Blob support that makes no sense server-side
• Dropped textConverted non-spec API support

Install

$ npm install @destinationstransfers/fetch --save

Usage

const fetch = require('@destinationstransfers/fetch');

// plain text or html

fetch('https://github.com/')
	.then(res => res.text())
	.then(body => console.log(body));

// json

fetch('https://api.github.com/users/github')
	.then(res => res.json())
	.then(json => console.log(json));

// catching network error
// 3xx-5xx responses are NOT network errors, and should be handled in then()
// you only need one catch() at the end of your promise chain

fetch('http://domain.invalid/')
	.catch(err => console.error(err));

// stream
// the node.js way is to use stream when possible

fetch('https://assets-cdn.github.com/images/modules/logos_page/Octocat.png')
	.then(res => {
		const dest = fs.createWriteStream('./octocat.png');
		res.body.pipe(dest);
	});

// buffer
// if you prefer to cache binary data in full, use buffer()
// note that buffer() is a node-fetch only API

import fileType from 'file-type';

fetch('https://assets-cdn.github.com/images/modules/logos_page/Octocat.png')
	.then(res => res.buffer())
	.then(buffer => fileType(buffer))
	.then(type => { /* ... */ });

// meta

fetch('https://github.com/')
	.then(res => {
		console.log(res.ok);
		console.log(res.status);
		console.log(res.statusText);
		console.log(res.headers.raw());
		console.log(res.headers.get('content-type'));
	});

// post

fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', { method: 'POST', body: 'a=1' })
	.then(res => res.json())
	.then(json => console.log(json));

// post with stream from file

import { createReadStream } from 'fs';

const stream = createReadStream('input.txt');
fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', { method: 'POST', body: stream })
	.then(res => res.json())
	.then(json => console.log(json));

// post with JSON

var body = { a: 1 };
fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', {
	method: 'POST',
	body:    JSON.stringify(body),
	headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
})
	.then(res => res.json())
	.then(json => console.log(json));

// post with form-data (detect multipart)

import FormData from 'form-data';

const form = new FormData();
form.append('a', 1);
fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', { method: 'POST', body: form })
	.then(res => res.json())
	.then(json => console.log(json));

// post with form-data (custom headers)
// note that getHeaders() is non-standard API

import FormData from 'form-data';

const form = new FormData();
form.append('a', 1);
fetch('http://httpbin.org/post', { method: 'POST', body: form, headers: form.getHeaders() })
	.then(res => res.json())
	.then(json => console.log(json));

// node 7+ with async function

(async function () {
	const res = await fetch('https://api.github.com/users/github');
	const json = await res.json();
	console.log(json);
})();

See test cases for more examples.

API

fetch(url[, options])

• url A string representing the URL for fetching
• options Options for the HTTP(S) request
• Returns: Promise<Response>

Perform an HTTP(S) fetch.

url should be an absolute url, such as http://example.com/. A path-relative URL (/file/under/root) or protocol-relative URL (//can-be-http-or-https.com/) will result in a rejected promise.

Options

The default values are shown after each option key.

{
	// These properties are part of the Fetch Standard
	method: 'GET',
	headers: {},        // request headers. format is the identical to that accepted by the Headers constructor (see below)
	body: null,         // request body. can be null, a string, a Buffer, a Blob, or a Node.js Readable stream
	redirect: 'follow', // set to `manual` to extract redirect headers, `error` to reject redirect

	// The following properties are node-fetch-npm extensions
	follow: 20,         // maximum redirect count. 0 to not follow redirect
	timeout: 0,         // req/res timeout in ms, it resets on redirect. 0 to disable (OS limit applies)
	compress: true,     // support gzip/deflate content encoding. false to disable
	size: 0,            // maximum response body size in bytes. 0 to disable
	agent: null         // http(s).Agent instance, allows custom proxy, certificate etc.
}

Default Headers

If no values are set, the following request headers will be sent automatically:

Header	Value
Accept-Encoding	gzip,deflate (when options.compress === true)
Accept	*/*
Connection	close (when no options.agent is present)
Content-Length	(automatically calculated, if possible)
User-Agent	node-fetch-npm/1.0 (+https://github.com/npm/node-fetch-npm)

Class: Request

An HTTP(S) request containing information about URL, method, headers, and the body. This class implements the Body interface.

Due to the nature of Node.js, the following properties are not implemented at this moment:

• type
• destination
• referrer
• referrerPolicy
• mode
• credentials
• cache
• integrity
• keepalive

The following node-fetch-npm extension properties are provided:

• follow
• compress
• counter
• agent

See options for exact meaning of these extensions.

new Request(input[, options])

(spec-compliant)

• input A string representing a URL, or another Request (which will be cloned)
• options [Options][#fetch-options] for the HTTP(S) request

Constructs a new Request object. The constructor is identical to that in the browser.

In most cases, directly fetch(url, options) is simpler than creating a Request object.

Class: Response

An HTTP(S) response. This class implements the Body interface.

The following properties are not implemented in node-fetch-npm at this moment:

• Response.error()
• Response.redirect()
• type
• redirected
• trailer

new Response([body[, options]])

(spec-compliant)

• body A string or Readable stream
• options A ResponseInit options dictionary

Constructs a new Response object. The constructor is identical to that in the browser.

Because Node.js does not implement service workers (for which this class was designed), one rarely has to construct a Response directly.

Class: Headers

This class allows manipulating and iterating over a set of HTTP headers. All methods specified in the Fetch Standard are implemented.

new Headers([init])

(spec-compliant)

• init Optional argument to pre-fill the Headers object

Construct a new Headers object. init can be either null, a Headers object, an key-value map object, or any iterable object.

// Example adapted from https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/#example-headers-class

const meta = {
  'Content-Type': 'text/xml',
  'Breaking-Bad': '<3'
};
const headers = new Headers(meta);

// The above is equivalent to
const meta = [
  [ 'Content-Type', 'text/xml' ],
  [ 'Breaking-Bad', '<3' ]
];
const headers = new Headers(meta);

// You can in fact use any iterable objects, like a Map or even another Headers
const meta = new Map();
meta.set('Content-Type', 'text/xml');
meta.set('Breaking-Bad', '<3');
const headers = new Headers(meta);
const copyOfHeaders = new Headers(headers);

Interface: Body

Body is an abstract interface with methods that are applicable to both Request and Response classes.

The following methods are not yet implemented in node-fetch-npm at this moment:

• formData()

body.body

(deviation from spec)

• Node.js Readable stream

The data encapsulated in the Body object. Note that while the Fetch Standard requires the property to always be a WHATWG ReadableStream, in node-fetch-npm it is a Node.js Readable stream.

body.bodyUsed

(spec-compliant)

• Boolean

A boolean property for if this body has been consumed. Per spec, a consumed body cannot be used again.

body.arrayBuffer()

body.blob()

body.json()

body.text()

(spec-compliant)

• Returns: Promise

Consume the body and return a promise that will resolve to one of these formats.

body.buffer()

(node-fetch-npm extension)

• Returns: Promise<Buffer>

Consume the body and return a promise that will resolve to a Buffer.

body.textConverted()

(node-fetch-npm extension)

• Returns: Promise<String>

Identical to body.text(), except instead of always converting to UTF-8, encoding sniffing will be performed and text converted to UTF-8, if possible.

Class: FetchError

(node-fetch-npm extension)

An operational error in the fetching process. See ERROR-HANDLING.md for more info.

License

MIT

Acknowledgement

Thanks to github/fetch for providing a solid implementation reference.