Making an HTTP request using node.js throws EAFNOSUPPORT

Question

I'm trying to make a simple HTTP GET request using node.js, but I'm running into trouble using node.js v0.3.4-pre (i.e. compiled from HEAD as of this morning). Here's my code:

    var cli = require('cli');
    var http = require('http');
    var url = require('url');

    cli.parse();

    cli.main(function(args, opts) {
            this.debug(args[0]);

            var siteUrl = url.parse(args[0]);
            var site = http.createClient(siteUrl.port, siteUrl.host);
            console.log(siteUrl);

            var request = site.request("GET", siteUrl.pathname, {'host' : siteUrl.host})
            request.end();

            request.on('response', function(response) {
                    response.setEncoding('utf8');
                    console.log('STATUS: ' + response.statusCode);
                    response.on('data', function(chunk) {
                            console.log("DATA: " + chunk);
                    });
            });
    });

Here's the error that I get:

node.js:68
      throw e; // process.nextTick error, or 'error' event on first tick
      ^
Error: EAFNOSUPPORT, Address family not supported by protocol family
    at doConnect (net.js:499:19)
    at Client.connect (net.js:652:30)
    at Client._ensureConnection (http.js:1033:10)
    at Client.request (http.js:1048:8)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/paul/Desktop/readify.js:16:21)
    at /usr/local/lib/node/.npm/cli/0.2.3-2/package/cli.js:995:18
    at Object.main (/usr/local/lib/node/.npm/cli/0.2.3-2/package/cli.js:1000:9)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/paul/Desktop/readify.js:10:5)
    at Module._compile (node.js:359:32)
    at Object..js (node.js:367:14)

Answer 1

Found the bug, siteUrl.port will be undefined unless the URL explicitly names a port. So, the solution is:

var site = http.createClient(siteUrl.port || 80, siteUrl.host);

Answer 2

var site = http.createClient(siteUrl.port, siteUrl.host);

should rather be

var site = http.createClient(siteUrl.port || 80, siteUrl.hostname);

Answer 3

The same error message appeared on my very old XPSP2-box for ANY connect()-attempts. E.g npm wasn't able to do anything, and simple http requests failed.

While trying to find a solution, this post appeared all over the place, but its not the same issue.

In my case it had to do with WSAIoctl(...) always returning WSAEOPNOTSUPP when querying for WSAID_CONNECTEX, which seemed strange. This led me to a post recommending doing a "netsh winsock reset" from the cmd, which fixed the problem!