Interacting with the Web - Node JS

Outline

1. Using Node as a web client
2. Building a web server
3. Real-time integration using Socket.IO

Making web requests in Node

• “options” can be one of the following:
• A URL string
• object specifying values for host, port, method, path, headers, auth, etc.
• The returned ClientRequest can be written/piped to for POST requests
• The ClientResponse object is provided via either callback (shown above) or as a “response” event on the request object.
• http.get() available as a simplified interface for GET requests.

Building a Web Server in Node

• Each request is provided via either callback (shown above) or as a “request” event on the server object
• The ServerRequest can be read from (or piped) for POST uploads
• The ServerResponse can be piped to when returning stream-oriented data in a response
• SSL support is provided by a similar https.createServer()