Using http module to make HTTP requests

Programs and applications often need to obtain data from another source or server. In modern web development, this is commonly achieved by sending an HTTP GET request to the source or server. Similarly, an application or program may also need to send data to other sources or servers. This is commonly achieved by sending an HTTP POST request containing the data to the target source or server.

As well as being used to build HTTP servers, the Node.js core http and https modules expose APIs that can be used to send requests to other servers.

In this recipe, we're going to use the Node.js core http and https modules to send both an HTTP GET request and an HTTP POST request.

Getting ready

Start by creating a directory named making-requests for this recipe. We'll also create a file called requests.js:

$ mkdir making-requests
$ cd making-requests
$ touch requests.js

How to do it…

We're going to use the Node...