ask

A simple, chainable way to construct HTTP requests in Node or the browser.

Usage Environments:

• Node
• Browser Standalone

Install

Bower

bower install ask --save

NPM

npm install ask --save

Usage

Include in App

Standalone

<script src="/bower_components/ask/dist/ask.js"></script>

Nodejs/Browserify

var ask = require('ask');

How to Build Requests

Simple GET request

var request = ask({
  origin: '', /* default origin */
  headers: {/* set default headers */},
  xhrOptions: {/* default xhr options */
});
 
// Settings for all endpoints
request
  .origin('http://api.example.com')
  .header('Authorzation', 'Bearer 1234')
  .xhrOption('withCredentials', true);
 
// Create an endpoint and customize with endpoint-specific settings
// Returns a function to execute later
var getUserFriends = request
  .get('users', 123, 'friends')
  .query('page', 1)
  .query('limit', 10);
 
// Request to '/users/123/friends'
getUserFriends().then(function (res) {
  var users = res.body;
}, function (err) {
  // err.body
});

Simple POST request

var request = ask();
 
request.origin('http://api.example.com');
 
var createUser = request.post('users');
 
// Send body data with request
createUser({
  name: 'example',
  email: '[e-mail]'
}).then(function (res) {
    // Success!
});
 

API

(Coming soon)

Mocking HTTP Requests

A useful feature with Ask is the ability to intercept http/xhr requests and provide custom response attributes, such as statusCode, headers, etc. This is is very helpful when testing code that uses the Ask module.

Before building a request:

var ask = require('ask');
var request = ask();
 
request
  .when('GET', '/some/path')
  .respond('custom response')
  .status(201)
  .header('content-type', 'text/html');
 
var somePath = request.get('some', 'path');
 
somePath().then(function (res) {
    
});

Mocking API

when(method, path)

Set up the http mocking interceptor. Returns an object mocking helper methods

• method - GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.
• path - the relative path to intercept

respond(body)

Set the response body text for the mocked request

• body - the data to set the response to

status(code)

Set the status code of the mocked response. Any code that is greater than or equal to 400 will cause the request promise to be rejected.

• code - a number, 200, 201, etc., that sets the statusCode of the response

header(name, value)

Set individual headers for the response. If no value is provided, the current header value is returned.

• name - the name of the header (case-insensitive)
• value - the value of the header

Build

Builds standalone version

npm install
npm run build

Run Tests

npm install
npm test