Node.js request object documentation? [closed]

Question

This is a pretty straight forward question, but I haven't found anything on Google. I'm looking for documentation on the request parameter in Node.js's create server function, but I haven't been able to find anything.

http.createServer(function(request, response){   console.log(JSON.stringify(request)); }); 

Debugging with JSON.stringify() gives me an error, that the object is circular and the program stops. I've seen different things like request.url, or request.body, but is there a page documenting all of the request functions and parameters? It seems like it should be easy to find, I just can't seem to find it.

I tried it again, and it turns out just doing console.log(request) writes out all of the data from the request. Here it is just as a reference:

ondata: [Function],      _httpMessage:       { domain: null,         _events: [Object],         _maxListeners: 10,         output: [],         outputEncodings: [],         writable: true,         _last: false,         chunkedEncoding: false,         shouldKeepAlive: true,         useChunkedEncodingByDefault: true,         sendDate: true,         _hasBody: true,         _trailer: '',         finished: false,         _hangupClose: false,         socket: [Circular],         connection: [Circular] } },   connection:    { _connecting: false,      _handle:       { fd: null,         writeQueueSize: 0,         owner: [Circular],         onread: [Function: onread],         reading: true },      _readableState:       { highWaterMark: 16384,         buffer: [],         length: 0,         pipes: null,         pipesCount: 0,         flowing: false,         ended: false,         endEmitted: false,         reading: true,         calledRead: true,         sync: false,         needReadable: true,         emittedReadable: false,         readableListening: false,         objectMode: false,         defaultEncoding: 'utf8',         ranOut: false,         awaitDrain: 0,         readingMore: false,         decoder: null,         encoding: null },      readable: true,      domain: null,      _events:       { end: [Object],         finish: [Function: onSocketFinish],         _socketEnd: [Function: onSocketEnd],         drain: [Function: ondrain],         timeout: [Function],         error: [Function],         close: [Object] },      _maxListeners: 10,      _writableState:       { highWaterMark: 16384,         objectMode: false,         needDrain: false,         ending: false,         ended: false,         finished: false,         decodeStrings: false,         defaultEncoding: 'utf8',         length: 0,         writing: false,         sync: true,         bufferProcessing: false,         onwrite: [Function],         writecb: null,         writelen: 0,         buffer: [] },      writable: true,      allowHalfOpen: true,      onend: [Function],      destroyed: false,      errorEmitted: false,      bytesRead: 357,      _bytesDispatched: 0,      _pendingData: null,      _pendingEncoding: '',      server:       { domain: null,         _events: [Object],         _maxListeners: 10,         _connections: 1,         connections: [Getter/Setter],         _handle: [Object],         _usingSlaves: false,         _slaves: [],         allowHalfOpen: true,         httpAllowHalfOpen: false,         timeout: 120000,         _connectionKey: '4:0.0.0.0:1337' },      _idleTimeout: 120000,      _idleNext:       { _idleNext: [Circular],         _idlePrev: [Circular],         msecs: 120000,         ontimeout: [Function: listOnTimeout] },      _idlePrev:       { _idleNext: [Circular],         _idlePrev: [Circular],         msecs: 120000,         ontimeout: [Function: listOnTimeout] },      _idleStart: 1371952289619,      parser:       { _headers: [],         _url: '',         onHeaders: [Function: parserOnHeaders],         onHeadersComplete: [Function: parserOnHeadersComplete],         onBody: [Function: parserOnBody],         onMessageComplete: [Function: parserOnMessageComplete],         socket: [Circular],         incoming: [Circular],         maxHeaderPairs: 2000,         onIncoming: [Function] },      ondata: [Function],      _httpMessage:       { domain: null,         _events: [Object],         _maxListeners: 10,         output: [],         outputEncodings: [],         writable: true,         _last: false,         chunkedEncoding: false,         shouldKeepAlive: true,         useChunkedEncodingByDefault: true,         sendDate: true,         _hasBody: true,         _trailer: '',         finished: false,         _hangupClose: false,         socket: [Circular],         connection: [Circular] } },   httpVersion: '1.1',   complete: false,   headers:    { host: 'localhost:1337',      connection: 'keep-alive',      'cache-control': 'max-age=0',      accept: 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8',      'user-agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like  Gecko) Chrome/27.0.1453.116 Safari/537.36',      'accept-encoding': 'gzip,deflate,sdch',      'accept-language': 'en-US,en;q=0.8,ja;q=0.6' },   trailers: {},   _pendings: [],   _pendingIndex: 0,   url: '/',   method: 'GET',   statusCode: null,   client:    { _connecting: false,      _handle:       { fd: null,         writeQueueSize: 0,         owner: [Circular],         onread: [Function: onread],         reading: true },      _readableState:       { highWaterMark: 16384,         buffer: [],         length: 0,         pipes: null,         pipesCount: 0,         flowing: false,         ended: false,         endEmitted: false,         reading: true,         calledRead: true,         sync: false,         needReadable: true,         emittedReadable: false,         readableListening: false,         objectMode: false,         defaultEncoding: 'utf8',         ranOut: false,         awaitDrain: 0,         readingMore: false,         decoder: null,         encoding: null },      readable: true,      domain: null,      _events:       { end: [Object],         finish: [Function: onSocketFinish],         _socketEnd: [Function: onSocketEnd],         drain: [Function: ondrain],         timeout: [Function],         error: [Function],         close: [Object] },      _maxListeners: 10,      _writableState:       { highWaterMark: 16384,         objectMode: false,         needDrain: false,         ending: false,         ended: false,         finished: false,         decodeStrings: false,         defaultEncoding: 'utf8',         length: 0,         writing: false,         sync: true,         bufferProcessing: false,         onwrite: [Function],         writecb: null,         writelen: 0,         buffer: [] },      writable: true,      allowHalfOpen: true,      onend: [Function],      destroyed: false,      errorEmitted: false,      bytesRead: 357,      _bytesDispatched: 0,      _pendingData: null,      _pendingEncoding: '',      server:       { domain: null,         _events: [Object],         _maxListeners: 10,         _connections: 1,         connections: [Getter/Setter],         _handle: [Object],         _usingSlaves: false,         _slaves: [],         allowHalfOpen: true,         httpAllowHalfOpen: false,         timeout: 120000,         _connectionKey: '4:0.0.0.0:1337' },      _idleTimeout: 120000,      _idleNext:       { _idleNext: [Circular],         _idlePrev: [Circular],         msecs: 120000,         ontimeout: [Function: listOnTimeout] },      _idlePrev:       { _idleNext: [Circular],         _idlePrev: [Circular],         msecs: 120000,         ontimeout: [Function: listOnTimeout] },      _idleStart: 1371952289619,      parser:       { _headers: [],         _url: '',         onHeaders: [Function: parserOnHeaders],         onHeadersComplete: [Function: parserOnHeadersComplete],         onBody: [Function: parserOnBody],         onMessageComplete: [Function: parserOnMessageComplete],         socket: [Circular],         incoming: [Circular],         maxHeaderPairs: 2000,         onIncoming: [Function] },      ondata: [Function],      _httpMessage:       { domain: null,         _events: [Object],         _maxListeners: 10,         output: [],         outputEncodings: [],         writable: true,         _last: false,         chunkedEncoding: false,         shouldKeepAlive: true,         useChunkedEncodingByDefault: true,         sendDate: true,         _hasBody: true,         _trailer: '',         finished: false,         _hangupClose: false,         socket: [Circular],         connection: [Circular] } },   _consuming: false,   _dumped: false,   httpVersionMajor: 1,   httpVersionMinor: 1,   upgrade: false } 

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this is a correct reply as it seems straightforward to me, but did you have a look at http://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_http_incomingmessage?

Request is instance of the above object. By the way, if you really want to see what's inside that object with "brute force," you should not parse it, as it will not be a JSON string at all, but instead do something like:

for (i in request) {   //Your code here } 

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

Just to add on, as a relative newbie in Node.js, I find it confusing that each framework has its own implementation of a "request" object.

For example,

Express: http://expressjs.com/api.html#req.param

and

Hapi: http://spumko.github.io/resource/api/#request-object (just to note that the raw request object is still available in request.raw.req)

Some libraries assume the presence of Express' "req.param" method, and fail when used in non-Express projects.