How do you read API documentation in Node.js?

Question

I am trying to read the documentation at https://github.com/mikeal/bent .

I don't know how to read async request(url[, body=null, headers={}]) . Specifically, what does the , represent?

I have seen an answer to this question before, and I have searched for it, but I could not find it. Marking this as a duplicate of that would be fantastic.

Answer 1

Here's a step by step for this example:

async request(url[, body=null, headers={}])

1. The async means it's an async function that always returns a promise.
2. url is the first argument and is required.
3. The [, args here ] means that the arguments inside the brackets are optional.
4. The comma in [, args here] means that if you include these arguments, then a comma is required to separate each argument from the previous one.
5. body=null means that if you don't pass the body argument, the default value is null
6. headers={} means that if you don't pass the headers argument, the default value is an empty object.

So, you can call it like any of these:

request(myUrl).then(...).catch(...)
request(myUrl, myBody).then(...).catch(...)
request(myUrl, myBody, myHeaders).then(...).catch(...)