Question

I have two node servers, one on port 5000 (call it “Face”) and another on port 5001 (call it “Hands”)

Both are started via a foreman procfile at the same time. Ports are fixed and the url I’m targeting works in the browser.

When the Hands starts up, it needs to talk to the Face (Facepalm?) and register itself. However, the below code doesn’t seem to be working. (This is coffeescript generated JS)

Register gets called during server initialization, after the http server has been started. In case it was a timing issue, I kick off the register function with a setTimeout() of 2 seconds. I know the page that its hitting (/home/register) is available and working.

Right now I can see it get to the “Posting to” console log line. On the Face I have put a console.log in the register code and its never logging anything – meaning I don’t think its actually getting hit. (It DOES log if hit from browser) And nothing errors out – it just calls the request and then wanders off to get a sandwich.

Both servers are “roll your own” – not using any frameworks. Let me know if you see a weird typo or need more info. Thanks!

register = function() {
    var _this = this;
    console.log('Registering with Face Server');
    return post_face('/home/register', GLOBAL.data, function(rs) {
      console.log(rs);
      if (rs.registered) {
        GLOBAL.data.registered = true;
        return console.log("Registered with face at " + GLOBAL.config.face_host + ":" + GLOBAL.config.face_port);
      } else {
        throw "ERROR: Could not register with face server! " + GLOBAL.config.face_host + ":" + GLOBAL.config.face_port;
        return false;
      }
    });
  };

  post_face = function(path, data, cb) {
    var post_data, post_options, post_req;
    post_data = querystring.stringify({
      'registration': data
    });
    post_options = {
      host: GLOBAL.config.face_host,
      port: GLOBAL.config.face_port,
      path: path,
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
        'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
        'Content-Length': post_data.length
      }
    };
    console.log("Posting to " + post_options.host + ":" + post_options.port);
    post_req = http.request(post_options, function(res) {
      var response,
        _this = this;
      console.log(res);
      response = "";
      res.setEncoding('utf8');
      res.on('data', function(chunk) {
        return response += chunk;
      });
      return res.on('end', function() {
        return cb.call(_this, response);
      });
    });
    return true;
  };

Answer 1

Thanks to Bill above, the answer was that I wasn’t actually posting the data and ending the request! Bad copy / paste / edit from some samples I was referring to. Here’s the last two lines of code I should have had:

post_req.write(post_data);
post_req.end();