Getting HTTP headers with Node.js

Question

Is there a built in way to get the headers of a specific address via node.js?

something like,

var headers = getUrlHeaders(\"http://stackoverflow.com\         


        

Answer 1

I'm not sure how you might do this with Node, but the general idea would be to send an HTTP HEAD request to the URL you're interested in.

HEAD

Asks for the response identical to the one that would correspond to a GET request, but without the response body. This is useful for retrieving meta-information written in response headers, without having to transport the entire content.

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Something like this, based it on this question:

var cli = require('cli');
var http = require('http');
var url = require('url');

cli.parse();

cli.main(function(args, opts) {
        this.debug(args[0]);

        var siteUrl = url.parse(args[0]);
        var site = http.createClient(80, siteUrl.host);
        console.log(siteUrl);

        var request = site.request('HEAD', siteUrl.pathname, {'host' : siteUrl.host})
        request.end();

        request.on('response', function(response) {
                response.setEncoding('utf8');
                console.log('STATUS: ' + response.statusCode);
                response.on('data', function(chunk) {
                        console.log("DATA: " + chunk);
                });
        });
});