How to download a file with Node.js (without using third-party libraries)?

Question

How do I download a file with Node.js without using third-party libraries?

I don\'t need anything special. I only want to download a file from a giv

Answer 1

Speaking of handling errors, it's even better listening to request errors too. I'd even validate by checking response code. Here it's considered success only for 200 response code, but other codes might be good.

const fs = require('fs');
const http = require('http');

const download = (url, dest, cb) => {
    const file = fs.createWriteStream(dest);

    const request = http.get(url, (response) => {
        // check if response is success
        if (response.statusCode !== 200) {
            return cb('Response status was ' + response.statusCode);
        }

        response.pipe(file);
    });

    // close() is async, call cb after close completes
    file.on('finish', () => file.close(cb));

    // check for request error too
    request.on('error', (err) => {
        fs.unlink(dest);
        return cb(err.message);
    });

    file.on('error', (err) => { // Handle errors
        fs.unlink(dest); // Delete the file async. (But we don't check the result) 
        return cb(err.message);
    });
};

Despite the relative simplicity of this code, I would advise to use the request module as it handles many more protocols (hello HTTPS!) which aren't natively supported by http.

That would be done like so:

const fs = require('fs');
const request = require('request');

const download = (url, dest, cb) => {
    const file = fs.createWriteStream(dest);
    const sendReq = request.get(url);

    // verify response code
    sendReq.on('response', (response) => {
        if (response.statusCode !== 200) {
            return cb('Response status was ' + response.statusCode);
        }

        sendReq.pipe(file);
    });

    // close() is async, call cb after close completes
    file.on('finish', () => file.close(cb));

    // check for request errors
    sendReq.on('error', (err) => {
        fs.unlink(dest);
        return cb(err.message);
    });

    file.on('error', (err) => { // Handle errors
        fs.unlink(dest); // Delete the file async. (But we don't check the result)
        return cb(err.message);
    });
};