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

Sending request would never been fun and easier than this. It comes with lots of feature:

• Get/Post/Put/Head/Delete/Patch
• Set - simple header setting
• JSON - made it simple with JSON string as a parameter
• 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 is getting more complicated in golang. You need to create a Client, setting header in different command, ... to do just 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 making things ugly while you can just do 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 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()

For a JSON POST with standard libraries, you might need to marshal map data structure to json format, setting header to 'application/json' (and other headers if you need to) and declare http.Client. So, you code become longer and hard 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)

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("").("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()

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

You can just use SetDebug to enable/disable debug mode and SetLogger to set your own choice of logger.

As the underlying gorequest is based on http.Client in most usecases, 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 contributers thus far:

@kemadz, @austinov, @figlief, @dickeyxxx, @killix, @jaytaylor, @na-ga, @dafang, @alaingilbert, @6david9, @pencil001, @QuentinPerez, and @smallnest

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.