GoRequest -- Simplified HTTP client ( inspired by famous SuperAgent lib in Node.js )

Sending request has never been as fun nor easier than this. It comes with lots of features:

• Get/Post/Put/Head/Delete/Patch/Options
• Set - simple header setting
• JSON - made it simple with JSON string as a parameter
• Multipart-Support - send data and files as multipart request
• Proxy - sending request via proxy
• Timeout - setting timeout for a request
• TLSClientConfig - taking control over tls where at least you can disable security check for https
• RedirectPolicy
• Cookie - setting cookies for your request
• CookieJar - automatic in-memory cookiejar
• BasicAuth - setting basic authentication header
• more to come..

$ go get github.com/parnurzeal/gorequest

See Go Doc or Go Walker for usage and details.

GoRequest makes thing much more simple for you, making http client more awesome and fun like SuperAgent + golang style usage.

This is what you normally do for a simple GET without GoRequest:

resp, err := http.Get("http://example.com/")

With GoRequest:

request := gorequest.New()
resp, body, errs := request.Get("http://example.com/").End()

Or below if you don't want to reuse it for other requests.

resp, body, errs := gorequest.New().Get("http://example.com/").End()

How about getting control over HTTP client headers, redirect policy, and etc. Things can quickly get more complicated in golang. You need to create a Client, set headers in a different command, ... just to do only one GET

client := &http.Client{
  CheckRedirect: redirectPolicyFunc,
}

req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", "http://example.com", nil)

req.Header.Add("If-None-Match", `W/"wyzzy"`)
resp, err := client.Do(req)

Why make things ugly while you can just do it as follows:

request := gorequest.New()
resp, body, errs := request.Get("http://example.com").
  RedirectPolicy(redirectPolicyFunc).
  Set("If-None-Match", `W/"wyzzy"`).
  End()

DELETE, HEAD, POST, PUT, PATCH are now supported and can be used in the same way as GET:

request := gorequest.New()
resp, body, errs := request.Post("http://example.com").End()
// PUT -> request.Put("http://example.com").End()
// DELETE -> request.Delete("http://example.com").End()
// HEAD -> request.Head("http://example.com").End()
// ANYTHING -> request.CustomMethod("TRACE", "http://example.com").End()

For a JSON POST with standard libraries, you might need to marshal map data structure to json format, set headers to 'application/json' (and other headers if you need to) and declare http.Client. So, your code becomes longer and harder to maintain:

m := map[string]interface{}{
  "name": "backy",
  "species": "dog",
}
mJson, _ := json.Marshal(m)
contentReader := bytes.NewReader(mJson)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "http://example.com", contentReader)
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
req.Header.Set("Notes","GoRequest is coming!")
client := &http.Client{}
resp, _ := client.Do(req)

Compared to our GoRequest version, JSON is for sure a default. So, it turns out to be just one simple line!:

request := gorequest.New()
resp, body, errs := request.Post("http://example.com").
  Set("Notes","gorequst is coming!").
  Send(`{"name":"backy", "species":"dog"}`).
  End()

Moreover, it also supports struct type. So, you can have a fun Mix & Match sending the different data types for your request:

type BrowserVersionSupport struct {
  Chrome string
  Firefox string
}
ver := BrowserVersionSupport{ Chrome: "37.0.2041.6", Firefox: "30.0" }
request := gorequest.New()
resp, body, errs := request.Post("http://version.com/update").
  Send(ver).
  Send(`{"Safari":"5.1.10"}`).
  End()

Not only for Send() but Query() is also supported. Just give it a try! :)

Moreover, GoRequest also supports callback function. This gives you much more flexibility on using it. You can use it any way to match your own style! Let's see a bit of callback example:

func printStatus(resp gorequest.Response, body string, errs []error){
  fmt.Println(resp.Status)
}
gorequest.New().Get("http://example.com").End(printStatus)

You can specify the content-type of the request to type multipart to send all data as multipart/form-data. This feature also allows you to send (multiple) files! Check the examples below!

gorequest.New().Post("http://example.com/").
  Type("multipart").
  Send(`{"query1":"test"}`).
  End()

The SendFile function accepts strings as path to a file, []byte slice or even a os.File! You can also combine them to send multiple files with either custom name and/or custom fieldname:

          f, _ := filepath.Abs("./file2.txt")
bytesOfFile, _ := ioutil.ReadFile(f)

gorequest.New().Post("http://example.com/").
  Type("multipart").
  SendFile("./file1.txt").
  SendFile(bytesOfFile, "file2.txt", "my_file_fieldname").
  End()

Check the docs for SendFile to get more information about the types of arguments.

When setting one header to the request, the Set method can be used:

gorequest.New().
      Post("/gamelist").
      Set("Accept", "application/json").
      End()

This will clear all headers currently attached to a request and add the specified header.

If there are multiple headers that must be appended to the request before sending, use AppendHeader. These can be chained together to add additional headers to the request:

gorequest.New().
      Post("/gamelist").
      AppendHeader("Accept", "application/json").
      AppendHeader("Accept", "text/plain").
      End()

See the docs for the Set and AppendHeader methods for information about parameter and return types.

In the case when you are behind proxy, GoRequest can handle it easily with Proxy func:

request := gorequest.New().Proxy("http://proxy:999")
resp, body, errs := request.Get("http://example-proxy.com").End()
// To reuse same client with no_proxy, use empty string:
resp, body, errs = request.Proxy("").Get("http://example-no-proxy.com").End()

To add a basic authentication header:

request := gorequest.New().SetBasicAuth("username", "password")
resp, body, errs := request.Get("http://example-proxy.com").End()

Timeout can be set in any time duration using time package:

request := gorequest.New().Timeout(2*time.Millisecond)
resp, body, errs:= request.Get("http://example.com").End()

Timeout func defines both dial + read/write timeout to the specified time parameter.

Thanks to @jaytaylor, we now have EndBytes to use when you want the body as bytes.

The callbacks work the same way as with End, except that a byte array is used instead of a string.

resp, bodyBytes, errs := gorequest.New().Get("http://example.com/").EndBytes()

We now have EndStruct to use when you want the body as struct.

The callbacks work the same way as with End, except that a struct is used instead of a string.

Supposing the URL http://example.com/ returns the body {"hey":"you"}

heyYou struct {
  Hey string `json:"hey"`
}

var heyYou heyYou

resp, _, errs := gorequest.New().Get("http://example.com/").EndStruct(&heyYou)

Supposing you need retry 3 times, with 5 seconds between each attempt when gets a BadRequest or a InternalServerError

request := gorequest.New()
resp, body, errs := request.Get("http://example.com/").
                    Retry(3, 5 * time.Second, http.StatusBadRequest, http.StatusInternalServerError).
                    End()

Redirects can be handled with RedirectPolicy which behaves similarly to net/http Client's CheckRedirect function. Simply specify a function which takes the Request about to be made and a slice of previous Requests in order of oldest first. When this function returns an error, the Request is not made.

For example to redirect only to https endpoints:

request := gorequest.New()
resp, body, errs := request.Get("http://example.com/").
                    RedirectPolicy(func(req Request, via []*Request) error {
                      if req.URL.Scheme != "https" {
                        return http.ErrUseLastResponse
                      }
                    }).
                    End()

You can reuse settings of a Request by cloning it before making any requests. This can be useful if you wish to re-use the SuperAgent across multiple requests without worrying about concurrency or having too many Transports being created.

Clones will copy the same settings (headers, query, etc..), but will only shallow copy any "Data" given to it. They will also share the same Transport and http.Client.

baseRequest := gorequest.New()
// apply anything you want to these settings. Eg:
baseRequest.Timeout(10 * time.Millisecond).
  BasicAuth("user", "password")

// then reuse the base request elsewhere, cloning before modifying or using it.
resp, body, errs := baseRequest.Clone().Get("http://exmaple.com/").End()

For debugging, GoRequest leverages httputil to dump details of every request/response. (Thanks to @dafang)

You can just use SetDebug or environment variable GOREQUEST_DEBUG=0|1 to enable/disable debug mode and SetLogger to set your own choice of logger.

Thanks to @QuentinPerez, we can see even how gorequest is compared to CURL by using SetCurlCommand.

As the underlying gorequest is based on http.Client in most use cases, gorequest.New() should be called once and reuse gorequest as much as possible.

If you find any improvement or issue you want to fix, feel free to send me a pull request with testing.

Thanks to all contributors thus far:

Also, co-maintainer is needed here. If anyone is interested, please email me (parnurzeal at gmail.com)

• Renee French - the creator of Gopher mascot
• Wisi Mongkhonsrisawat for providing an awesome GoRequest's Gopher image :)

GoRequest is MIT License.