Getting binary content in node.js with http.request

edi9999 picture edi9999 · Jul 24, 2013 · Viewed 61.7k times · Source

I would like to retrieve binary data from an https request.

I found a similar question that uses the request method, Getting binary content in Node.js using request, is says setting encoding to null should work, but it doesn't.

options = {
    hostname: urloptions.hostname,
    path: urloptions.path,
    method: 'GET',
    rejectUnauthorized: false,
    encoding: null
};

req = https.request(options, function(res) {
    var data;
    data = "";
    res.on('data', function(chunk) {
        return data += chunk;
    });
    res.on('end', function() {
        return loadFile(data);
    });
    res.on('error', function(err) {
        console.log("Error during HTTP request");
        console.log(err.message);
    });
})

Edit: setting encoding to 'binary' doesn't work either

Answer

Guaycuru picture Guaycuru · Jan 9, 2014

The accepted answer did not work for me (i.e., setting encoding to binary), even the user who asked the question mentioned it did not work.

Here's what worked for me, taken from: http://chad.pantherdev.com/node-js-binary-http-streams/

http.get(url.parse('http://myserver.com:9999/package'), function(res) {
    var data = [];

    res.on('data', function(chunk) {
        data.push(chunk);
    }).on('end', function() {
        //at this point data is an array of Buffers
        //so Buffer.concat() can make us a new Buffer
        //of all of them together
        var buffer = Buffer.concat(data);
        console.log(buffer.toString('base64'));
    });
});

Edit: Update answer following a suggestion by Semicolon