Question

While working with Facebook graph api, I have used https.get to make a request for facebook user data.

var optionsP = {
        host: 'graph.facebook.com',     
        path: '/me?access_token=XXXX'
    };

    https.get(optionsP, function(resp) {                                        
        resp.on('data', function(d) {                                   
            console.log('ondata')
            console.log(d.length)
            process.stdout.write(d)
        }); 
    }).on('error', function(e) {
        console.error(e);
});

But the response data comes as 2 parts! First time it prints upto 1034 characters, then again same call back will work and prints remaining 1347 characters. What is the reason for these partial responses?

Answer 1

That’s normal. resp is a stream. It’s a ClientResponse object, that implements the readable stream interface. Here are the docs: http://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_http_clientresponse

You can either pipe the output somewhere that accepts streams, or store it in a buffer until you receive the ‘end’ event.

Here is an example that stores the data in a String in memory, until it has all arrived:

https.get(optionsP, function(resp) {                                        
    resp.setEncoding(); //Now the data is a string!
    var store = "";
    resp.on('data', function(d) {
        store += d;
    }); 
    resp.on('end', function() {
        console.log("this is all: " + store);
    });
}).on('error', function(e) {
    console.error(e);
});