SuperAgent

Super Agent is light-weight progressive ajax API crafted for flexibility, readability, and a low learning curve after being frustrated with many of the existing request APIs. It also works with Node.js!

 request
   .post('/api/pet')
   .send({ name: 'Manny', species: 'cat' })
   .set('X-API-Key', 'foobar')
   .set('Accept', 'application/json')
   .end(function(res){
     if (res.ok) {
       alert('yay got ' + JSON.stringify(res.body));
     } else {
       alert('Oh no! error ' + res.text);
     }
   });

Test documentation

The following test documentation was generated with Mocha’s “doc” reporter, and directly reflects the test suite. This provides an additional source of documentation.

Request basics

A request can be initiated by invoking the appropriate method on the request object, then calling .end() to send the request. For example a simple GET request:

 request
   .get('/search')
   .end(function(res){

   });

A method string may also be passed:

request('GET, '/search/).end(callback);

The node client may also provide absolute urls:

 request
   .get('http://example.com/search')
   .end(function(res){

   });

DELETE, HEAD, POST, PUT and other HTTP verbs may also be used, simply change the method name:

request
  .head('/favicon.ico')
  .end(function(res){

  });

DELETE is a special-case, as it’s a reserved word, so the method is named .del():

request
  .del('/user/1')
  .end(function(res){

  });

The HTTP method defaults to GET, so if you wish, the following is valid:

 request('/search', function(res){

 });

Setting header fields

Setting header fields is simple, invoke .set() with a field name and value:

 request
   .get('/search')
   .set('API-Key', 'foobar')
   .set('Accept', 'application/json')
   .end(callback);

You may also pass an object to set several fields in a single call:

 request
   .get('/search')
   .set({ 'API-Key': 'foobar', Accept: 'application/json' })
   .end(callback);

GET requests

The .send() method accepts objects, which when used with the GET method will form a query-string. The following will produce the path /search?query=Manny&range=1..5&order=desc.

 request
   .get('/search')
   .send({ query: 'Manny' })
   .send({ range: '1..5' })
   .send({ order: 'desc' })
   .end(function(res){

   });

Or as a single object:

request
  .get('/search')
  .send({ query: 'Manny', range: '1..5', order: 'desc' })
  .end(function(res){

  });

The .send() method accepts strings as well:

  request
    .get('/querystring')
    .send('search=Manny&range=1..5')
    .end(function(res){

    });

POST / PUT requests

A typical JSON POST request might look a little like the following, where we set the Content-Type header field appropriately, and “write” some data, in this case just a JSON string.

  request.post('/user')
    .set('Content-Type', 'application/json')
    .send('{"name":"tj","pet":"tobi"})
    .end(callback)

Since JSON is undoubtably the most common, it’s the default! The following example is equivalent to the previous.

  request.post('/user')
    .send({ name: 'tj', pet: 'tobi' })
    .end(callback)

Or using multiple .send() calls:

  request.post('/user')
    .send({ name: 'tj' })
    .send({ pet: 'tobi' })
    .end(callback)

SuperAgent formats are extensible, however by default “json” and “form-data” are supported. To send the data as application/x-www-form-urlencoded simply invoke .type() with “form-data”, where the default is “json”. This request will POST the body “name=tj&pet=tobi”.

  request.post('/user')
    .type('form-data')
    .send({ name: 'tj' })
    .send({ pet: 'tobi' })
    .end(callback)

Setting the Content-Type

The obvious solution is to use the .set() method:

 request.post('/user')
   .set('Content-Type', 'application/json')

As a short-hand the .type() method is also available, accepting the canonicalized MIME type name complete with type/subtype, or simply the extension name such as “xml”, “json”, “png”, etc:

 request.post('/user')
   .type('application/json')

 request.post('/user')
   .type('json')

 request.post('/user')
   .type('png')

Query strings

When issuing a GET request the res.send(obj) method will invoke res.query(obj), this is a method which may be used with other HTTP methods in order to build up a query-string. For example populating ?format=json&dest=/login on a POST:

request
  .post('/')
  .query({ format: 'json' })
  .query({ dest: '/login' })
  .send({ post: 'data', here: 'wahoo' })
  .end(callback);

Parsing response bodies

Super Agent will parse known response-body data for you, currently supporting application/x-www-form-urlencoded, application/json, and multipart/form-data.

JSON / Urlencoded

The property res.body is the parsed object, for example if a request responded with the JSON string ‘{“user”:{“name”:“tobi”}}’, res.body.user.name would be “tobi”. Likewise the x-www-form-urlencoded value of “user[name]=tobi” would yield the same result.

Multipart

The Node client supports multipart/form-data via the Formidable module. When parsing multipart responses, the object res.files is also available to you. Suppose for example a request responds with the following multipart body:

--whoop
Content-Disposition: attachment; name="image"; filename="tobi.png"
Content-Type: image/png

... data here ...
--whoop
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="name"
Content-Type: text/plain

Tobi
--whoop--

You would have the values res.body.name provided as “Tobi”, and res.files.image as a File object containing the path on disk, filename, and other properties.

Response text

The res.text property is also available for a string representation of the body as illustrated by this test:

var req = request.post('local/echo');
req.write('{"name"').should.be.a('boolean');
req.write(':"tobi"}').should.be.a('boolean');
req.end(function(res){
  res.text.should.equal('{"name":"tobi"}');
});

Response properties

Many helpful flags and properties are set on the Response object, ranging from the response text, parsed response body, header fields, status flags and more.

Response text

The res.text property contains the unparsed response body string.

Response body

Much like SuperAgent can auto-serialize request data, it can also automatically parse it. When a parser is defined for the Content-Type, it is parsed, which by default includes “application/json” and “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”. The parsed object is then available via res.body.

Response header fields

The res.header contains an object of parsed header fields, lowercasing field names much like node does. For example res.header['content-length'].

Response Content-Type

The Content-Type response header is special-cased, providing res.type, which is void of the charset (if any). For example the Content-Type of “text/html; charset=utf8” will provide “text/html” as res.type, and the res.charset property would then contain “utf8”.

Response status

The response status flags help determine if the request was a success, among other useful information, making SuperAgent ideal for interacting with RESTful web services. These flags are currently defined as:

 var type = status / 100 | 0;

 // status / class
 res.status = status;
 res.statusType = type;

 // basics
 res.info = 1 == type;
 res.ok = 2 == type;
 res.clientError = 4 == type;
 res.serverError = 5 == type;
 res.error = 4 == type || 5 == type;

 // sugar
 res.accepted = 202 == status;
 res.noContent = 204 == status || 1223 == status;
 res.badRequest = 400 == status;
 res.unauthorized = 401 == status;
 res.notAcceptable = 406 == status;
 res.notFound = 404 == status;

Basic authentication

Basic auth is currently provided by the node client in two forms, first via the URL as “user:pass”:

request.get('http://tobi:learnboost@local').end(callback);

As well as via the .auth() method:

request
  .get('http://local')
  .auth('tobo', 'learnboost')
  .end(callback);

Following redirects

By default up to 5 redirects will be followed, however you may specify this with the res.redirects(n) method:

request
  .get('/some.png')
  .redirects(2)
  .end(callback);

Piping data

The Node client allows you to pipe data to and from the request. For example piping a file’s contents as the request:

var request = require('superagent')
  , fs = require('fs');

var stream = fs.createReadStream('path/to/my.json');
var req = request.post('/somewhere');
req.type('json');
stream.pipe(req);

Or piping the response to a file:

var request = require('superagent')
  , fs = require('fs');

var stream = fs.createWeadStream('path/to/my.json');
var req = request.get('/some.json');
req.pipe(stream);

Multipart requests

Super Agent is also great for building multipart requests, providing a both low-level and high-level APIs.

The low-level API uses Parts to represent a file or field. The .part() method returns a new Part, which provides an API similar to the request itself.

 var req = request.post('/upload');

 req.part()
   .set('Content-Type', 'image/png')
   .set('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename="myimage.png"')
   .write('some image data')
   .write('some more image data');

 req.part()
   .set('Content-Disposition', 'form-data; name="name"')
   .set('Content-Type', 'text/plain')
   .write('tobi');

 req.end(callback);

Attaching files

As mentioned a higher-level API is also provided, in the form of .attach(file[, filename]) and .field(name, value). Attaching several files is simple, you can also provide a custom filename for the attachment, otherwise the basename of the attached file is used.

request
  .post('/upload')
  .attach('path/to/tobi.png', 'Tobi.png')
  .attach('path/to/loki.png')
  .attach('path/to/jane.png')
  .end(callback);

Field values

Much like form fields in HTML, you can set field values with the .field(name, value) method. Suppose you want to upload a few images with your name and email, your request might look something like this:

 request
   .post('/upload')
   .field('user[name]', 'Tobi')
   .field('user[email]', 'tobi@learnboost.com')
   .attach('path/to/tobi.png')
   .attach('path/to/loki.png')
   .attach('path/to/jane.png')
   .end(callback);

Compression

The Node client supports compressed responses, best of all, you don’t have to do anything! It just works.