hyphyphyph / superagent

Ajax with less suck - (and node.js HTTP client to match)

SuperAgent

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.

Motivation

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 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){

});

Running node tests

Install dependencies:

 $ npm install

Run em!

$ make test

Running browser tests

Install the test server deps (nodejs / express):

$ npm install

Start the test server:

$ make test-server

Visit localhost:3000/ in the browser.

Browser build

The browser build of superagent is located in the ./build directory.

Examples:

• agency tests
• express demo app

Wiki

For superagent extensions such as couchdb and oauth visit the wiki.

License

MIT