request-curl

The goal of this library is to use the request.js syntax/options without using NodeJS's default HTTP Client and instead using cURL to make the requests. Made after spending too long looking for a good HTTP2 supported request client without running into major issues when using proxies or making mass requests such as h2-request or got. Built to help emulate similar browser-similar HTTP(S) requests to browsers without using a CPU/Memory intensive program such as Selenium or Puppeteer.

Supported Features

• Headers
• HTTP1.1/HTTP2
• Cipher suites
• Proxy support
• gzip, deflare & br decompression
• Following redirects
• Max redirects
• SSL support
• Automatically convert body to JSON
• Built in JSON parsing
• Automatic Cookiejar/Cookie sessions through 'tough-cookie'
• Supports path as is and disabling rebuilding path dot sequences (AKA Path traversing) /../
• Support sending JSON body in request
• Ability to disable tcp socket reuse
• Ability to use transform functions

Getting Started

const rc = require("request-curl");

request-curl works very similar to request-promise. The package wraps node-libcurl into native promises and uses syntax based on request.

Crawl a webpage

(async () => {
  const opts = {
    uri: "https://www.google.com",
    headers: {
      "User-Agent": "request-curl",
    },
  };
  const resp = await rc(opts);
  console.log(resp.body);
});

By default, the option resolveWithFullResponse is set to true, unlike in request. If you want to resolve with only the body, set resolveWithFullResponse to false.

GET something from a JSON REST API

(async() => {
  const opts = {
    uri: "http://httpbin.org/get",
    json: true, // Automatically parses JSON string in response
    headers: {
      "User-Agent": "request-curl",
    };
  };
  const resp = await rc(opts);
  console.log(resp.body);
});

POST data to JSON REST API

(async () => {
  const opts = {
    uri: "http://httpbin.org/post",
    json: true,
    body: {
      "hello": "world",
    },
  };
  const resp = await rc(opts);
  console.log(resp.body);
});

POST like HTML forms

(async() => {
  const options = {
    uri: "http://httpbin.org/post",
    form: {
      "hello": "world",
    },
  };
  const resp = await rc(opts);
  console.log(resp.body);
});

Use query strings

(async() => {
  const options = {
    uri: "http://httpbin.org/get",
    qs: {
      "hello": "world",
    },
  };
  const resp = await rc(opts);
  console.log(resp.body);
});

Headers

Currently header order is not supported by cURL. This isn't really a big issue currently since there's many browsers that don't have specified header orders which you can emulate. Headers follow the same request.js syntax. By default no headers are set.

const opts = {
    url: 'https://www.httpbin.org/headers',
    headers: { // No default headers
        'User-agent': 'CurlyRequest/v1',
        'Accept': 'application/json'
    }
}

HTTP2

Curl-request has built in HTTP2 support. This is not enabled by default and must be enabled with the http2: true option.

Proxy Support

Curl-request has one-line proxy support, The same as request.js, it also has authentication support (User/password proxies)

const opts = {
    url: 'https://www.httpbin.org/headers',
    proxy: 'http://username:password@45.212.29.55:3128' // Default false
}

Content Decoding

Curl-request has support for br, gzip and deflate compression, This means You can use the same Accept-Encoding headers as Google Chrome whilst being able to decode the response. Also helps save file-transfer size.

You can decode these types of responses using decode: true or gzip: true (The gzip parameter is for fallback support for request.js). Some websites can return invalid content-encoding types which cURL cannot handle throwing a fatal error. You can get the raw response by setting decode: false

Redirects

You can specify whether to follow redirects using the followRedirects key. By default Curl-request will follow 3XX redirects. You can also specify a maximum amount of redirects to follow before exiting the request (Prevent getting stuck in a redirect loop)

const opts = {
    url: 'https://www.httpbin.org/headers',
    followRedirects: false, // Default true
    maxRedirects: 5 // Default 10
}

SSL

Force strict usage of SSL in the requests.

const opts = {
    url: 'https://www.httpbin.org/headers',
    strictSSL: false, // Default true
}

JSON

Automatically convert the response body to a JSON object rather than having to use JSON.parse().

const opts = {
    url: 'https://www.httpbin.org/headers',
    json: true // Default false
}