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

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();

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

This is my solution, although for sure you can use a lot of modules that give you the object as a promise or similar. Anyway, you were missing another callback

function getData(callbackData){
var http = require('http');
var str = '';


var options = {
host: 'www.random.org',
path: '/integers/?num=1&min=1&max=10&col=1&base=10&format=plain&rnd=new'
};


callback = function(response) {


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


response.on('end', function () {
console.log(str);
callbackData(str);
});


//return str;
}


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


// These just return undefined and empty
console.log(req.data);
console.log(str);
}

somewhere else

getData(function(data){
// YOUR CODE HERE!!!
})

from learnyounode:

var http = require('http')
var bl = require('bl')


http.get(process.argv[2], function (response) {
response.pipe(bl(function (err, data) {
if (err)
return console.error(err)
data = data.toString()
console.log(data)
}))
})

Shorter example using http.get:

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

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();
});
}

I think it's too late to answer this question but I faced the same problem recently my use case was to call the paginated JSON API and get all the data from each pagination and append it to a single array.

const https = require('https');
const apiUrl = "https://example.com/api/movies/search/?Title=";
let finaldata = [];
let someCallBack = function(data){
finaldata.push(...data);
console.log(finaldata);
};
const getData = function (substr, pageNo=1, someCallBack) {


let actualUrl = apiUrl + `${substr}&page=${pageNo}`;
let mydata = []
https.get(actualUrl, (resp) => {
let data = '';
resp.on('data', (chunk) => {
data += chunk;
});
resp.on('end', async () => {
if (JSON.parse(data).total_pages!==null){
pageNo+=1;
somCallBack(JSON.parse(data).data);
await getData(substr, pageNo, someCallBack);
}
});
}).on("error", (err) => {
console.log("Error: " + err.message);
});
}


getData("spiderman", pageNo=1, someCallBack);

Like @ackuser mentioned we can use other module but In my use case I had to use the node https. Hoping this will help others.