NodeJS native http2 support

Question

Does NodeJS 4.x or 5.x natively support the HTTP/2 protocol? I know there's http2 package but it's an external thing.

Are there some plans to merge http2 support into the Node's core?

Answer 1

--expose-http2 flag enables experimental HTTP2 support. This flag can be used in nightly build (Node v8.4.0) since Aug 5, 2017 (pull request).

node --expose-http2 client.js

client.js

const http2 = require('http2');
const client = http2.connect('https://stackoverflow.com');

const req = client.request();
req.setEncoding('utf8');

req.on('response', (headers, flags) => {
  console.log(headers);
});

let data = '';
req.on('data', (d) => data += d);
req.on('end', () => client.destroy());
req.end();

--experimental-modules flag also can be added since Node v8.5.0.

node --expose-http2 --experimental-modules client.mjs

client.mjs

import http2 from 'http2';

const client = http2.connect('https://stackoverflow.com');

I use NVS (Node Version Switcher) for testing nightly builds.

nvs add nightly
nvs use nightly