Where is body in a nodejs http get response

Question

I m reading the docs at http   nodejs org docs v0 4 0 api http html http request  but for some reason  I can t seem to to actually find the body data attribute on the returned  finished  response object      gt  var res   http get  host  www somesite com   path         gt  res finished true   gt  res  hasBody true   It s finished  http get does that for you   so it should have some kind of content  But there s no body  no data  and I can t read from it  Where is the body hiding

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If you want to use  get you can do it like this   http get url  function res       res setEncoding  utf8        res on  data   function chunk           console log chunk

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A portion of Coffee here     My little helper read buffer    buffer  callback  - gt    data        buffer on  readable   - gt  data    buffer read   toString     buffer on  end   - gt  callback data    So request looks like http get  http   i want some stuff    res  - gt    read buffer res   response  - gt        Do some things with your response       but don t do that exactly  D     eval CoffeeScript compile response  bare  true    And compiled  var read buffer   read buffer   function buffer  callback      var data    data         buffer on  readable   function         return data    buffer read   toString            return buffer on  end   function         return callback data             http get  http   i want some stuff   function res      return read buffer res  function response        return eval CoffeeScript compile response          bare  true

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I also want to add that the http ClientResponse returned by http get   has an end event  so here is another way that I receive the body response   var options       host   www google com     port  80    path    index html      http get options  function res      var body         res on  data   function chunk        body    chunk          res on  end   function         console log body            on  error   function e      console log  Got error      e message

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The data event is fired multiple times with  chunks  of the body as they are downloaded and an end event when all chunks have been downloaded   With Node supporting Promises now  I created a simple wrapper to return the concatenated chunks through a Promise   const httpGet   url   gt      return new Promise  resolve  reject    gt        http get url  res   gt          res setEncoding  utf8          let body              res on  data   chunk   gt  body    chunk         res on  end        gt  resolve body           on  error   reject              You can call it from an async function with   const body   await httpGet  http   www somesite com

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Just an improved version to nkron responce  const httpGet   url   gt      return new Promise  resolve  reject    gt        http get url  res   gt          res setEncoding  utf8          const body             res on  data   chunk   gt  body push chunk          res on  end        gt  resolve body join               on  error   reject             Appending chunks in an string   is better for memory usage  the join      will allocate new memory only once

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You can t get the body of the response from the return value of http get     http get   doesn t return a response object  It returns the request object  http clientRequest   So  there isn t any way to get the body of the response from the return value of http get     I know it s an old question  but reading the documentation you linked to shows that this was the case even when you posted it

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The body is not fully stored as part of the response  the reason for this is because the body can contain a very large amount of data  if it was to be stored on the response object  the program s memory would be consumed quite fast  Instead  Node js uses a mechanism called Stream  This mechanism allows holding only a small part of the data and allows the programmer to decide if to fully consume it in memory or use each part of the data as its flowing  There are multiple ways how to fully consume the data into memory  since HTTP Response is a readable stream  all readable methods are available on the res object  listening to the  quot data quot  event and saving the chunks passed to the callback const chunks       res on  quot data quot    chunk    gt        chunks push chunk       res on  quot end quot        gt        const body   Buffer concat chunks          When using this approach you do not interfere with the behavior of the stream and you are only gathering the data as it is available to the application   using the  quot readble quot  event and calling res read   const chunks        res on  quot readable quot        gt       let chunk     while null      chunk   res read             chunks push chunk            res on  quot end quot        gt        const body   Buffer concat chunks          When going with this approach you are fully in charge of the stream flow and until res read is called no more data will be passed into the stream   using an async iterator const chunks        for await  const chunk of readable        chunks push chunk       const body   Buffer concat chunks      This approach is similar to the  quot data quot  event approach  It will just simplify the scoping and allow the entire process to happen in the same scope  While as described  it is possible to fully consume data from the response it is always important to keep in mind if it is actually necessary to do so  In many cases  it is possible to simply direct the data to its destination without fully saving it into memory  Node js read streams  including HTTP response  have a built-in method for doing this  this method is called pipe  The usage is quite simple  readStream pipe writeStream    for example  If the final destination of your data is the file system  you can simply open a write stream to the file system and then pipe the data to ts destination  const   createWriteStream     require  quot fs quot    const writeStream   createWriteStream  quot someFile quot    res pipe writeStream

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Needle module is also good  here is an example which uses needle module   var needle   require  needle     needle get  http   www google com   function error  response      if   error  amp  amp  response statusCode    200      console log response body

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http request docs contains example how to receive body of the response through handling data event   var options       host   www google com     port  80    path    upload     method   POST      var req   http request options  function res      console log  STATUS      res statusCode     console log  HEADERS      JSON stringify res headers      res setEncoding  utf8      res on  data   function  chunk        console log  BODY      chunk              req on  error   function e      console log  problem with request      e message           write data to request body req write  data n    req write  data n    req end      http get does the same thing as http request except it calls req end   automatically   var options       host   www google com     port  80    path    index html      http get options  function res      console log  Got response      res statusCode      res on  data   function chunk        console log  BODY      chunk            on  error   function e      console log  Got error      e message

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You need to add a listener to the request because node js works asynchronous like that   request on  response   function  response      response on  data   function  chunk        console log  BODY      chunk

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Edit  replying to self 6 years later The await keyword is the best way to get a response from an HTTP request  avoiding callbacks and  then   You ll also need to use an HTTP client that returns Promises  http get   still returns a Request object  so that won t work   fetch is a low level client  that is both available from npm and will be in future versions of node superagent is a mature HTTP clients that features more reasonable defaults including simpler query string encoding  properly using mime types  JSON by default  and other common HTTP client features  axois is also quite popular and has similar advantages to superagent  await will wait until the Promise has a value - in this case  an HTTP response  const superagent   require  superagent      async function      const response   await superagent get  https   www google com     console log response text         Using await  control simply passes onto the next line once the promise returned by superagent get   has a value

[node.js] Where is body in a nodejs http.get response?

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