Can I make synchronous call with `request` npm package?

Question

I am using request module in my NodeJS application, for making server-to-server API calls. I am making the API call like this:

request(options, function (error, response, body) {
    if( error ){
       // return error response
    }
    // return success response here
});

For some reason, I need to not use this asynchronous way of making call, but do it synchronously. So, is there any way to make this call in synchronous manner. I tried and found some other modules for this, but I need to use this same module.

Thanks

Answer 1

No you cannot not. Request will return you promise and you have to handle it somewhere using .then() or calling the function with async/await pattern.

Answer 2

Because an HTTP request is asynchronous by nature, you cannot do it synchronously. However, you can use ES6+ Promises and async/await like so:

// First, encapsulate into a Promise
const doRequest = () => new Promise((resolve, reject) => request(options, function (error, response, body) {
  if( error ){
    reject(error)
  }
  resolve(response)
});

// And then, use async/await

const x = 1 + 1

const response = await myRequest()

console.log(response)

More info: https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Objets_globaux/Promise

Answer 3

As indicated by @Errorname, promises are probably what you are looking for. Instead of writing the code by hand, you could also use the package request-promise : https://www.npmjs.com/package/request-promise

Answer 4

If you want a strongly-typed, synchronous client, you can try out ts-sync-request .

NPM: https://www.npmjs.com/package/ts-sync-request

This library is a wrapper around sync-request.

You can attach a header & make a request like below:

import { SyncRequestClient } from 'ts-sync-request/dist'

let url = "http://someurl.com";

let response = new SyncRequestClient()
                            .addHeader("content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")
                        .post<string, MyResponseModel>(url, "city=Dubai");