node.js - Where is body in a nodejs http.get response?

Question

I'm reading the docs at http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.0/api/http.html#http.request, but for some reason, I can't seem to to actually find the body/data attribute on the returned, finished response object.

> var res = http.get({host:'www.somesite.com', path:'/'})

> res.finished
true

> res._hasBody
true

It's finished (http.get does that for you), so it should have some kind of content. But there's no body, no data, and I can't read from it. Where is the body hiding?

Answer 1

http.request docs contains example how to receive body of the response through handling data event:

var options = {
  host: 'www.google.com',
  port: 80,
  path: '/upload',
  method: 'POST'
};

var req = http.request(options, function(res) {
  console.log('STATUS: ' + res.statusCode);
  console.log('HEADERS: ' + JSON.stringify(res.headers));
  res.setEncoding('utf8');
  res.on('data', function (chunk) {
    console.log('BODY: ' + chunk);
  });
});

req.on('error', function(e) {
  console.log('problem with request: ' + e.message);
});

// write data to request body
req.write('data
');
req.write('data
');
req.end();

http.get does the same thing as http.request except it calls req.end() automatically.

var options = {
  host: 'www.google.com',
  port: 80,
  path: '/index.html'
};

http.get(options, function(res) {
  console.log("Got response: " + res.statusCode);

  res.on("data", function(chunk) {
    console.log("BODY: " + chunk);
  });
}).on('error', function(e) {
  console.log("Got error: " + e.message);
});