To help you get started, we've collected the most common ways that got-lite is being used within popular public projects.

This is a fork of got that reduces npm package size

This fork removes cacheable-request, introduced in https://github.com/sindresorhus/got/pull/284 bringing the npm package from 0.75MB to 0.45MB.

Run yarn autoclean --init && yarn autoclean --force to bring it down even more to 0.25MB

The use case is Lambda@Edge or other environments where code size is important

> Simplified HTTP requests

A nicer interface to the built-in http module.

Created because request is bloated (several megabytes!).

Highlights

• Promise & stream API
• Request cancelation
• RFC compliant caching
• Follows redirects
• Retries on network failure
• Progress events
• Handles gzip/deflate
• Timeout handling
• Errors with metadata
• JSON mode
• WHATWG URL support
• Electron support

Install

$ npm install got

Usage

const got = require('got');

(async () => {
	try {
		const response = await got('sindresorhus.com');
		console.log(response.body);
		//=> ' ...'
	} catch (error) {
		console.log(error.response.body);
		//=> 'Internal server error ...'
	}
})();

Streams

const fs = require('fs');
const got = require('got');

got.stream('sindresorhus.com').pipe(fs.createWriteStream('index.html'));

// For POST, PUT, and PATCH methods `got.stream` returns a `stream.Writable`
fs.createReadStream('index.html').pipe(got.stream.post('sindresorhus.com'));

API

It's a GET request by default, but can be changed by using different methods or in the options.

got(url, [options])

Returns a Promise for a response object with a body property, a url property with the request URL or the final URL after redirects, and a requestUrl property with the original request URL.

The response object will normally be a Node.js HTTP response stream, however if returned from the cache it will be a responselike object which behaves in the same way.

The response will also have a fromCache property set with a boolean value.

url

Type: string Object

The URL to request as simple string, a http.request options, or a WHATWG URL.

Properties from options will override properties in the parsed url.

If no protocol is specified, it will default to https.

options

Type: Object

Any of the http.request options.

body

Type: string Buffer stream.Readable

This is mutually exclusive with stream mode.

Body that will be sent with a POST request.

If present in options and options.method is not set, options.method will be set to POST.

If content-length or transfer-encoding is not set in options.headers and body is a string or buffer, content-length will be set to the body length.

encoding

Type: string null
Default: 'utf8'

Encoding to be used on setEncoding of the response data. If null, the body is returned as a Buffer.

form

Type: boolean
Default: false

This is mutually exclusive with stream mode.

If set to true and Content-Type header is not set, it will be set to application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

body must be a plain object or array and will be stringified.

json

Type: boolean
Default: false

This is mutually exclusive with stream mode.

If set to true and Content-Type header is not set, it will be set to application/json.

Parse response body with JSON.parse and set accept header to application/json. If used in conjunction with the form option, the body will the stringified as querystring and the response parsed as JSON.

body must be a plain object or array and will be stringified.

query

Type: string Object

Query string object that will be added to the request URL. This will override the query string in url.

timeout

Type: number Object

Milliseconds to wait for the server to end the response before aborting request with ETIMEDOUT error.

This also accepts an object with separate connect, socket, and request fields for connection, socket, and entire request timeouts.

retries

Type: number Function
Default: 2

Number of request retries when network errors happens. Delays between retries counts with function 1000 * Math.pow(2, retry) + Math.random() * 100, where retry is attempt number (starts from 0).

Option accepts function with retry and error arguments. Function must return delay in milliseconds (0 return value cancels retry).

Note: if retries is number, ENOTFOUND and ENETUNREACH error will not be retried (see full list in is-retry-allowed module).

followRedirect

Type: boolean
Default: true

Defines if redirect responses should be followed automatically.

Note that if a 303 is sent by the server in response to any request type (POST, DELETE, etc.), got will automatically request the resource pointed to in the location header via GET. This is in accordance with the spec.

decompress

Type: boolean
Default: true

Decompress the response automatically.

If this is disabled, a compressed response is returned as a Buffer. This may be useful if you want to handle decompression yourself or stream the raw compressed data.

cache

Type: Object
Default: false

Cache adapter instance for storing cached data.

useElectronNet

Type: boolean
Default: false

When used in Electron, Got will use electron.net instead of the Node.js http module. According to the Electron docs, it should be fully compatible, but it's not entirely. See #315.

Streams

got.stream(url, [options])

stream method will return Duplex stream with additional events:

.on('request', request)

request event to get the request object of the request.

Tip: You can use request event to abort request:

got.stream('github.com')
	.on('request', req => setTimeout(() => req.abort(), 50));

.on('response', response)

response event to get the response object of the final request.

.on('redirect', response, nextOptions)

redirect event to get the response object of a redirect. The second argument is options for the next request to the redirect location.

.on('uploadProgress', progress)

.on('downloadProgress', progress)

Progress events for uploading (sending request) and downloading (receiving response). The progress argument is an object like:

{
	percent: 0.1,
	transferred: 1024,
	total: 10240
}

If it's not possible to retrieve the body size (can happen when streaming), total will be null.

Note: Progress events can also be used with promises.

(async () => {
	const response = await got('sindresorhus.com')
		.on('downloadProgress', progress => {
			// Report download progress
		})
		.on('uploadProgress', progress => {
			// Report upload progress
		});

	console.log(response);
})();

.on('error', error, body, response)

error event emitted in case of protocol error (like ENOTFOUND etc.) or status error (4xx or 5xx). The second argument is the body of the server response in case of status error. The third argument is response object.

got.get(url, [options])

got.post(url, [options])

got.put(url, [options])

got.patch(url, [options])

got.head(url, [options])

got.delete(url, [options])

Sets options.method to the method name and makes a request.

Errors

Each error contains (if available) statusCode, statusMessage, host, hostname, method, path, protocol and url properties to make debugging easier.

In Promise mode, the response is attached to the error.

got.CacheError

When a cache method fails, for example if the database goes down, or there's a filesystem error.

got.RequestError

When a request fails. Contains a code property with error class code, like ECONNREFUSED.

got.ReadError

When reading from response stream fails.

got.ParseError

When json option is enabled, server response code is 2xx, and JSON.parse fails.

got.HTTPError

When server response code is not 2xx. Includes statusCode, statusMessage, and redirectUrls properties.

got.MaxRedirectsError

When server redirects you more than 10 times. Includes a redirectUrls property, which is an array of the URLs Got was redirected to before giving up.

got.UnsupportedProtocolError

When given an unsupported protocol.

got.CancelError

When the request is aborted with .cancel().

Aborting the request

The promise returned by Got has a .cancel() method which, when called, aborts the request.

(async () => {
	const request = got(url, options);

	…

	// In another part of the code
	if (something) {
		request.cancel();
	}

	…

	try {
		await request;
	} catch (error) {
		if (request.canceled) { // Or `error instanceof got.CancelError`
			// Handle cancelation
		}

		// Handle other errors
	}
})();

Cache

You can use the JavaScript Map type as an in memory cache:

const got = require('got');
const map = new Map();

(async () => {
		let response = await got('sindresorhus.com', {cache: map});
		console.log(response.fromCache);
		//=> false

		response = await got('sindresorhus.com', {cache: map});
		console.log(response.fromCache);
		//=> true
})();

Got uses Keyv internally to support a wide range of storage adapters. For something more scalable you could use an official Keyv storage adapter:

$ npm install @keyv/redis

const got = require('got');
const KeyvRedis = require('@keyv/redis');

const redis = new KeyvRedis('redis://user:pass@localhost:6379');

got('sindresorhus.com', {cache: redis});

Got supports anything that follows the Map API, so it's easy to write your own storage adapter or use a third-party solution.

For example, the following are all valid storage adapters:

const storageAdapter = new Map();
// or
const storageAdapter = require('./my-storage-adapter');
// or
const QuickLRU = require('quick-lru');
const storageAdapter = new QuickLRU({maxSize: 1000});

got('sindresorhus.com', {cache: storageAdapter});

View the Keyv docs for more information on how to use storage adapters.

Proxies

You can use the tunnel module with the agent option to work with proxies:

const got = require('got');
const tunnel = require('tunnel');

got('sindresorhus.com', {
	agent: tunnel.httpOverHttp({
		proxy: {
			host: 'localhost'
		}
	})
});

If you require different agents for different protocols, you can pass a map of agents to the agent option. This is necessary because a request to one protocol might redirect to another. In such a scenario, got will switch over to the right protocol agent for you.

const got = require('got');
const HttpAgent = require('agentkeepalive');
const HttpsAgent = HttpAgent.HttpsAgent;

got('sindresorhus.com', {
	agent: {
		http: new HttpAgent(),
		https: new HttpsAgent()
	}
});

Cookies

You can use the cookie module to include cookies in a request:

const got = require('got');
const cookie = require('cookie');

got('google.com', {
	headers: {
		cookie: cookie.serialize('foo', 'bar')
	}
});

Form data

You can use the form-data module to create POST request with form data:

const fs = require('fs');
const got = require('got');
const FormData = require('form-data');
const form = new FormData();

form.append('my_file', fs.createReadStream('/foo/bar.jpg'));

got.post('google.com', {
	body: form
});

OAuth

You can use the oauth-1.0a module to create a signed OAuth request:

const got = require('got');
const crypto  = require('crypto');
const OAuth = require('oauth-1.0a');

const oauth = OAuth({
	consumer: {
		key: process.env.CONSUMER_KEY,
		secret: process.env.CONSUMER_SECRET
	},
	signature_method: 'HMAC-SHA1',
	hash_function: (baseString, key) => crypto.createHmac('sha1', key).update(baseString).digest('base64')
});

const token = {
	key: process.env.ACCESS_TOKEN,
	secret: process.env.ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET
};

const url = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/home_timeline.json';

got(url, {
	headers: oauth.toHeader(oauth.authorize({url, method: 'GET'}, token)),
	json: true
});

Unix Domain Sockets

Requests can also be sent via unix domain sockets. Use the following URL scheme: PROTOCOL://unix:SOCKET:PATH.

• PROTOCOL - http or https (optional)
• SOCKET - absolute path to a unix domain socket, e.g. /var/run/docker.sock
• PATH - request path, e.g. /v2/keys

got('https://unix:/var/run/docker.sock:/containers/json');

// or without protocol (http by default)
got('unix:/var/run/docker.sock:/containers/json');

AWS

Requests to AWS services need to have their headers signed. This can be accomplished by using the aws4 package. This is an example for querying an "Elasticsearch Service" host with a signed request.

const url = require('url');
const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
const aws4 = require('aws4');
const got = require('got');
const config = require('./config');

// Reads keys from the environment or `~/.aws/credentials`. Could be a plain object.
const awsConfig = new AWS.Config({ region: config.region });

function request(uri, options) {
	const awsOpts = {
		region: awsConfig.region,
		headers: {
			accept: 'application/json',
			'content-type': 'application/json'
		},
		method: 'GET',
		json: true
	};

	// We need to parse the URL before passing it to `got` so `aws4` can sign the request
	const opts = Object.assign(url.parse(uri), awsOpts, options);
	aws4.sign(opts, awsConfig.credentials);

	return got(opts);
}

request(`https://${config.host}/production/users/1`);

request(`https://${config.host}/production/`, {
	// All usual `got` options
});

Tips

User Agent

It's a good idea to set the 'user-agent' header so the provider can more easily see how their resource is used. By default, it's the URL to this repo.

const got = require('got');
const pkg = require('./package.json');

got('sindresorhus.com', {
	headers: {
		'user-agent': `my-module/${pkg.version} (https://github.com/username/my-module)`
	}
});

304 Responses

Bear in mind, if you send an if-modified-since header and receive a 304 Not Modified response, the body will be empty. It's your responsibility to cache and retrieve the body contents.

Related

• gh-got - Convenience wrapper for interacting with the GitHub API
• gl-got - Convenience wrapper for interacting with the GitLab API
• travis-got - Convenience wrapper for interacting with the Travis API
• graphql-got - Convenience wrapper for got to interact with GraphQL

Created by

Sindre Sorhus	Vsevolod Strukchinsky	Alexander Tesfamichael	Luke Childs

License

MIT