Why await is not working for node request module?

Question

I'm new to nodejs. I’m not seeing the response in ex 1, but i see in ex 2. Why? Await works for me in other places, using babel.

Ex 1

 let res = await request(url)
 console.log(res);
 console.log(res.body);

Ex 2

request(url, function (error, res, body) {
 if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
 console.log(body) 
 }
});

Await works in other places, I’m using babel and required modules for es6 and es7 features. For example, await works in squelize call, i validated. But it doesn’t work for request call. Why?

FYI, `async/await` is not part of ES7. It's still only a proposal. — Felix Kling, Jul 18 '16 at 08:06
See my answer [here](http://stackoverflow.com/a/38252603/2410379). Additionally, [this](https://tc39.github.io/ecmascript-asyncawait/#async-function-definitions) is helpful too. — David Pine, Jul 18 '16 at 12:06

Saad · Answer 1 · 2022-09-19T19:05:45.013

201

You should only await on something that returns a Promise. I would definitely recommend reading up on Promises before you start working with async and await. You can probably get this example to work by creating your own wrapper function around request to make it return a promise, like so:

function doRequest(url) {
  return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
    request(url, function (error, res, body) {
      if (!error && res.statusCode === 200) {
        resolve(body);
      } else {
        reject(error);
      }
    });
  });
}

// Usage:
async function main() {
  try {
    let response = await doRequest(url);
    console.log(response); // `response` will be whatever you passed to `resolve()` at the top
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error); // `error` will be whatever you passed to `reject()` at the top
  }
}

main();

Edit: Alternatively, you can look into using a promise-based request library instead of the regular request module.

edited Sep 19 '22 at 19:05

answered Jul 18 '16 at 03:11

Saad

49,729
21
73
112

8

this should be the answer – felipekm Oct 31 '17 at 13:38
How about using `promisify` from `util`? – Satish Kumar Jun 23 '19 at 11:38
Really Helpful. – iksheth Oct 18 '19 at 08:16
[request-promise](https://github.com/request/request-promise) has been deprecated since then – J. Chan May 22 '20 at 01:36
Thanks j-chan, I updated the answer based on your comment. – Saad May 26 '20 at 20:19

dimpiax · Answer 2 · 2019-03-11T20:21:46.430

25

ES6

Usage: Where request is require('./await-request')

const init = async () => {
    try {
        const result = await request({
            uri: 'statdirectory/exchange?json',
            baseUrl: 'https://bank.gov.ua/NBUStatService/v1/',
            json: true
        })
        console.log(result)
    }
    catch (err) {
        console.error(err)
    }
}

Code:

// await-request.js
const request = require('request')

module.exports = async (value) => 
    new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        request(value, (error, response, data) => {
            if(error) reject(error)
            else resolve(data)
        })
    })

edited Mar 11 '19 at 20:21

answered Nov 11 '16 at 16:38

dimpiax

12,093
5
62
45

4

you mean async-request not await-request? right? https://www.npmjs.com/package/async-request – HMagdy Mar 11 '19 at 19:11
2

@HMagdy no, `await-request` it's a filename of local file. – dimpiax Mar 11 '19 at 20:22
1

aha, yep got it – HMagdy Mar 12 '19 at 11:21

score 24 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 13 '19 at 10:01

24

As @saadq says you can only 'await' functions returning Promise.

I like using Node.js's util package to promisify a function with callback. So util + request can be used like that:

const util = require('util')
const request = require("request");

const requestPromise = util.promisify(request);
const response = await requestPromise(url);
console.log('response', response.body);

Demo: https://runkit.com/mhmtztmr/node-js-request-with-async-await

answered Feb 13 '19 at 10:01

moztemur

941
1
9
22

This is just what I needed for a lambda -- simple and doesn't require anything other than Node – jcollum Jun 21 '19 at 22:06

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 26 '18 at 05:35

Try with the following NPM package

node-fetch

          var url = "http://www.google.com";
          try 
          {
            const response = await fetch(url);
            const json = await response.json();
            return {message:json.message,status:json.type};
          }
          catch(error)
          {
            console.log(error);
          }

Hope it works.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 07 '23 at 09:15

need to add await to the response.json() because response.json() is promise

( async function(){
      const{default:fetch} = await import('node-fetch');
      try {
        response = await fetch('https://datausa.io/api/data?drilldowns=Nation&measures=Population')  ;
        console.log(await response.json())
      } catch (err) {
        console.log('Http error', err);
      }
    })()

Why await is not working for node request module?

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