http: Using URL with http.request (feature suggestion)

[ronkorving]

• Version: v10.1.0
• Platform: all
• Subsystem: http

Using URL objects is clearly the way to go when it comes to dealing with URLs, and http.request() can take a URL object as input. This is great. But if I want to also send custom headers, I'm stuck. I would like to suggest an option for the options object called url that can be set to URL object and maybe even a string. I don't really want to make an already complex API more complex, but I'm not sure how else we can make it easier to use URL objects with HTTP requests.

Feedback, suggestions, thoughts from @nodejs/collaborators very welcome.

[Trott]

Can you provide some sample code showing the way you would like to be able to write calls to http.request() using this feature? Perhaps with either additional code showing how it has to be done currently?

[bnoordhuis]

Seems like a reasonable feature to me but what takes precedence when both .path and .url are present? Why?

Alternative: overload http.request() with a 3-arg http.request(url[, options, callback]).

[mcollina]

I'm 👍 for a 3-arg signature.

[ronkorving]

@Trott I was suggesting:

const options = { url: new URL('...'), headers: { foo: 'bar' } };
http.request(options, cb);

@bnoordhuis Good question, and I think your suggestion for 3-arg is a good alternative that makes the precedence very clear (the URL wins, right? :)).

[joyeecheung]

Fun fact: in fs.createReadStream(path[, options]), when options.fd is specified, path gets ignored.

[benjamingr]

Slightly related whatwg/fetch#452

[ronkorving]

@benjamingr Yeah, I think the takeaway there is that the URL is basically expected to be (or is cast to) a string, and URL.prototype.toString will do the trick for URL objects. I think that behavior (strings and URL objects) makes sense for us too.