How to get data out of a Node.js http get request

Solution 1:

Of course your logs return undefined : you log before the request is done. The problem isn't scope but asynchronicity.

http.request is asynchronous, that's why it takes a callback as parameter. Do what you have to do in the callback (the one you pass to response.end):

callback = function(response) {

  response.on('data', function (chunk) {
    str += chunk;
  });

  response.on('end', function () {
    console.log(req.data);
    console.log(str);
    // your code here if you want to use the results !
  });
}

var req = http.request(options, callback).end();

Solution 2:

Simple Working Example of Http request using node.

const http = require('https')

httprequest().then((data) => {
        const response = {
            statusCode: 200,
            body: JSON.stringify(data),
        };
    return response;
});
function httprequest() {
     return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        const options = {
            host: 'jsonplaceholder.typicode.com',
            path: '/todos',
            port: 443,
            method: 'GET'
        };
        const req = http.request(options, (res) => {
          if (res.statusCode < 200 || res.statusCode >= 300) {
                return reject(new Error('statusCode=' + res.statusCode));
            }
            var body = [];
            res.on('data', function(chunk) {
                body.push(chunk);
            });
            res.on('end', function() {
                try {
                    body = JSON.parse(Buffer.concat(body).toString());
                } catch(e) {
                    reject(e);
                }
                resolve(body);
            });
        });
        req.on('error', (e) => {
          reject(e.message);
        });
        // send the request
       req.end();
    });
}

Solution 3:

Shorter example using http.get:

require('http').get('http://httpbin.org/ip', (res) => {
    res.setEncoding('utf8');
    res.on('data', function (body) {
        console.log(body);
    });
});

Solution 4:

from learnyounode:

var http = require('http')  

http.get(options, function (response) {  
  response.setEncoding('utf8')  
  response.on('data', console.log)  
  response.on('error', console.error)  
})

'options' is the host/path variable