How do I ungzip (decompress) a NodeJS request's module gzip response body?

Question

How do I unzip a gzipped body in a request\'s module response?

I have tried several examples around the web but none of them appear to work.

request(         


        

Answer 1

I have formulated a more complete answer after trying the different ways to gunzip, and solving errors to do with encoding.

Hope this helps you too:

var request = require('request');
var zlib = require('zlib');

var options = {
  url: 'http://some.endpoint.com/api/',
  headers: {
    'X-some-headers'  : 'Some headers',
    'Accept-Encoding' : 'gzip, deflate',
  },
  encoding: null
};

request.get(options, function (error, response, body) {

  if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
    // If response is gzip, unzip first
    var encoding = response.headers['content-encoding']
    if (encoding && encoding.indexOf('gzip') >= 0) {
      zlib.gunzip(body, function(err, dezipped) {
        var json_string = dezipped.toString('utf-8');
        var json = JSON.parse(json_string);
        // Process the json..
      });
    } else {
      // Response is not gzipped
    }
  }

});