Node.js: Is there a synchronous version of the `http.get` method in node.js?

Question

Is there a synchronous version of the http.get method in node.js?

Something like:

http.getSync({
    host: 'google.com', 
    port: 80, 
    path: '/'
}, function(response){  

});

console.log(response)

Sometimes it would be very useful.

Answer 1

There is a sync-request library that is pretty easily to use. Internally it spawns a child process synchronously and uses then-request, so options are similar to that library.

As others have stated, I would caution against using this in your runtime logic. However, it can be very handy for loading configuration.

If you are loading configuration, another strategy can be using a separate script to start your process. Example:

var http = require("http"),
    cp   = require("child_process");

// Starting process
if (process.argv.length < 3) {
    return http.get("http://www.google.com/index.html", function(res) {
        var config = {
            statusCode : res.statusCode,
            headers    : res.headers
        };

        cp.fork(module.filename, [JSON.stringify(config)]);
    });
}

// Config provided
var config = JSON.parse(process.argv[2]);

console.log(config.statusCode);