grunt-http

Sends a HTTP request and deals with the response.

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.1

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-http --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-http');

The "http" task

Overview

In your project's Gruntfile, add a section named http to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig().

grunt.initConfig({
  http: {
    your_service: {
      options: {
        url: 'your/url.com',
      },
      dest: 'optional/file/to/save/response'
    }
  }
})

If you add a source file, the contents will be added to the body option unless another field is specified in the sourceField option.

Options

grunt-http uses the request module under the hood, and apart from a couple specific to grunt-http options, the rest get passed straight to it. Here's a copy of the of the module's option docs. Otherwise, go to the repo and have a look at what's it's capable of.

• uri || url - fully qualified uri or a parsed url object from url.parse(). REQUIRED.
• callback - A function that will receive an error, response and body, after a response if finished
• qs - object containing querystring values to be appended to the uri
• method - http method, defaults to GET
• headers - http headers, defaults to {}
• body - entity body for PATCH, POST and PUT requests. Must be buffer or string.
• sourceField - A field in the body or form to add the source files' contents to. Can contain full stops to separate object path. Ie "form.js_code".
• form - When passed an object, this sets body to a querystring representation of value, and adds Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8 header. When passed no options, a FormData instance is returned (and is piped to request). For multipart/form-data install the optional dependency npm i form-data.
• auth - A hash containing values user || username, password || pass, and sendImmediately (optional). See more info here.
• json - sets body but to JSON representation of value and adds Content-type: application/json header. Additionally, parses the response body as json.
• multipart - (experimental) array of objects which contains their own headers and body attribute. Sends multipart/related request. See example below.
• followRedirect - follow HTTP 3xx responses as redirects. defaults to true.
• followAllRedirects - follow non-GET HTTP 3xx responses as redirects. defaults to false.
• maxRedirects - the maximum number of redirects to follow, defaults to 10.
• encoding - Encoding to be used on setEncoding of response data. If set to null, the body is returned as a Buffer.
• pool - A hash object containing the agents for these requests. If omitted this request will use the global pool which is set to node's default maxSockets.
• pool.maxSockets - Integer containing the maximum amount of sockets in the pool.
• timeout - Integer containing the number of milliseconds to wait for a request to respond before aborting the request
• proxy - An HTTP proxy to be used. Support proxy Auth with Basic Auth the same way it's supported with the url parameter by embedding the auth info in the uri.
• oauth - Options for OAuth HMAC-SHA1 signing. See more info here. The oauth-sign module must be installed to use this functionality.
• hawk - Options for Hawk signing. The credentials key must contain the necessary signing info, see hawk docs for details. You will need to install the hawk module to use this functionality.
• strictSSL - Set to true to require that SSL certificates be valid. Note: to use your own certificate authority, you need to specify an agent that was created with that ca as an option.
• jar - If true, remember cookies for future use (or define your custom cookie jar; see mikeal/request's examples). To get either of these functions working you'll need to install an optional dependecy npm i tough-cookie.
• aws - object containing aws signing information, should have the properties key and secret as well as bucket unless you're specifying your bucket as part of the path, or you are making a request that doesn't use a bucket (i.e. GET Services). You will need to install the aws-sign2 module to use this functionality.
• httpSignature - Options for the HTTP Signature Scheme using Joyent's library. The http-signature module must be installed and the keyId and key properties must be specified.
• localAddress - Local interface to bind for network connections.
• ignoreErrors - Ignore the status code returned (if any).

There are a few optional dependencies you'll need to install to get certain functionality from this module.

• if you wish to use cookies (jar) install tough-cookie
• if you want to pass multipart/form-data you'll need to install form-data
• if you wish to tunnel your requests install tunnel-agent
• if you want to use Joyent's HTTP Signature Scheme, install http-signature
• if you require oauth signing, you need to install the oauth-sign module
• to use Hawk signing, you must use the hawk module
• if you want to use AWS signing, you must install the aws-sign2 module

Google Closure

In this example, we're using google's closure service to compile a JS file.

grunt.initConfig({
  http: {
    closure: {
      options: {
        url: 'http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/compile',
        method: 'POST',
        form: {
          output_info: 'compiled_code',
          output_format: 'text',
          compilation_level: 'SIMPLE_OPTIMIZATIONS',
          warning_level: 'default'
        },
        sourceField: 'form.js_code'
      },
      files: {
        'build/main.js': 'src/main.js'
      }
    }
  }
});

multipart/form-data

In this example we're going to access the form data object directly to add an image to the POST fields.

Note, you need to install the form-data package before you can use this method.

var path = require('path');

grunt.initConfig({
  http: {
    multipart: {
      options: {
        url: 'http://posttestserver.com/post.php?dir=grunt-http',
        method: 'POST',
        form: function (form) {
          form.append('file', grunt.file.read(path.join(__dirname, 'images', 'pic.png')));
        }
      }
    }
  }
});

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using Grunt.

Release History