Getting HTTP headers with Node js

Question

Is there a built in way to get the headers of a specific address via node js   something like   var headers   getUrlHeaders  http   stackoverflow com      would return  HTTP 1 1 200 OK  Cache-Control  public  max-age 60  Content-Type  text html  charset utf-8  Content-Encoding  gzip  Expires  Sat  07 May 2011 17 32 38 GMT  Last-Modified  Sat  07 May 2011 17 31 38 GMT  Vary     Date  Sat  07 May 2011 17 31 37 GMT  Content-Length  32516

User · Answer

I m not sure how you might do this with Node  but the general idea would be to send an HTTP HEAD request to the URL you re interested in   HEAD Asks for the response identical to the one that would correspond to a GET request  but without the response body  This is useful for retrieving meta-information written in response headers  without having to transport the entire content    Something like this  based it on this question  var cli   require  cli    var http   require  http    var url   require  url     cli parse     cli main function args  opts            this debug args 0             var siteUrl   url parse args 0            var site   http createClient 80  siteUrl host           console log siteUrl            var request   site request  HEAD   siteUrl pathname    host    siteUrl host           request end             request on  response   function response                    response setEncoding  utf8                    console log  STATUS      response statusCode                   response on  data   function chunk                            console log  quot DATA   quot    chunk

User · Answer

Using the excellent request module   var request   require  request      request  http   stackoverflow com    method   HEAD    function  err  res  body     console log res headers         You can change the method to GET if you wish  but using HEAD will save you from getting the entire response body if you only wish to look at the headers

User · Answer

Try to look at http get and response headers   var http   require  http     var options       host   stackoverflow com     port  80    path          http get options  function res      console log  Got response      res statusCode      for var item in res headers        console log item          res headers item           on  error   function e      console log  Got error      e message

User · Answer

This sample code should work   var http   require  http    var options    method   HEAD   host   stackoverflow com   port  80  path        var req   http request options  function res        console log JSON stringify res headers           req end

User · Answer

I had some problems with http get  so I switched to the lib request   var request   require  request     var url    http   blog mynotiz de     var options         url  url      method   HEAD      request options  function  error  response  body            if  error                return console error  upload failed    error                      if  response headers  content-length                  var file size   response headers  content-length                console log file size

User · Answer

Here is my contribution  that deals with any URL using http or https  and use Promises   const http   require  http   const https   require  https   const url   require  url    function getHeaders myURL      const parsedURL   url parse myURL    const options         protocol  parsedURL protocol      hostname  parsedURL hostname      method   HEAD       path  parsedURL path       let protocolHandler    parsedURL protocol      https     https   http     return new Promise  resolve  reject    gt        let req   protocolHandler request options   res    gt          resolve res headers             req on  error    e    gt          reject e             req end           getHeaders myURL  then  headers    gt      console log headers

[node.js] Getting HTTP headers with Node.js

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