SuperAgent is a small progressive client-side HTTP request library, and Node.js module with the same API, sporting many high-level HTTP client features. View the docs.
node:
$ npm install superagent
component:
$ component install visionmedia/superagent
with script tags use ./superagent.js
This library spawned from my frustration with jQuery's weak & inconsistent Ajax support. jQuery's API, while having recently added some promise-like support, is largely static, forcing you to build up big objects containing all the header fields and options, not to mention most of the options are awkwardly named "type" instead of "method", etc. Onto examples!
The following is what you might typically do for a simple GET with jQuery:
$.get('/user/1', function(data, textStatus, xhr){
});Great, it's ok, but it's kinda lame having 3 arguments just to access something on the xhr. Our equivalent would be:
request.get('/user/1', function(res){
});The response object is an instanceof request.Response, encapsulating all of this information instead of throwing a bunch of arguments at you. For example, we can check res.status, res.header for header fields, res.text, res.body etc.
An example of a JSON POST with jQuery typically might use $.post(), however once you need to start defining header fields you have to then re-write it using $.ajax()... so that might look like:
$.ajax({
url: '/api/pet',
type: 'POST',
data: { name: 'Manny', species: 'cat' },
headers: { 'X-API-Key': 'foobar' }
}).success(function(res){
}).error(function(){
});Not only is it ugly, but it's pretty opinionated. jQuery likes to special-case {4,5}xx- for example, you cannot (easily at least) receive a parsed JSON response for say "400 Bad Request". This same request would look like this:
request
.post('/api/pet')
.send({ name: 'Manny', species: 'cat' })
.set('X-API-Key', 'foobar')
.set('Accept', 'application/json')
.end(function(error, res){
});Building on the existing API internally, we also provide something similar to $.post() for those times in life where your interactions are very basic:
request.post('/api/pet', cat, function(error, res){
});Usage:
var nocache = require('no-cache');
var request = require('superagent');
var prefix = require('superagent-prefix')('/static');
prefix(request); // Prefixes *all* requests
request
.get('/some-url')
.use(nocache) // Prevents caching of *only* this request
.end(function(res){
// Do something
});Existing plugins:
- superagent-no-cache - prevents caching by including Cache-Control header
- superagent-prefix - prefixes absolute URLs (useful in test environment)
Please prefix your plugin component with superagent-*
For superagent extensions such as couchdb and oauth visit the wiki.
Install dependencies:
$ npm install
Run em!
$ make test
Install the test server deps (nodejs / express):
$ npm install
Start the test server:
$ make test-server
Visit localhost:4000/ in the browser.
The browser build of superagent is located in ./superagent.js
MIT