How to use XHR API in Node.js?

This is a follow-up to my previous question

Suppose I’ve some javascript code, which runs fine on client (in a browser). This code makes a lot of XHR calls using the browser API.

Now I would like to run this code in node.js. Does node.js provide the XHR API as in browser ?

Answer

Natively Node.js does not provide the browser XHR API. There is, however, a node module xmlhttprequest that does.

If the file is on the server itself, you can use the fs.readFile or fs.readFileSync.

If it is on a remote server, then you can do an asynchronous XHR type request using a module like request: https://www.npmjs.com/package/request. This requires some rewriting of code.

Probably the least re-writing of your client-side code will be if you use the xmlhttprequest node module. It implements the browser XHR API for node.