hattip

Hattip is a promise-based HTTP client for Node.js that makes it easy to follow the most important rules of interservice network etiquette while remaining simple and direct.

What are the most important rules of interservice network etiquette? Use retries and timeouts.

Design

Hattip has the following goals:

A simple API that makes (and keeps) Promises.
All the options available to http.request, including the meta-option to use http.request yourself, directly, and give Hattip the ClientRequest.
Flexible retry support.
Flexible timeout support.
Timing measurements, to help you understand your request lifecycle and decide what timeouts to use.
Auto-parsed JSON request and response bodies (a trivial perk).

Hattip will not try to support other fancy HTTP client features unless they're shown to be critically entangled with those above. If you want more complex features, you can use a more complex client library. Hattip bundles together the features above because: (1) Promises and retries are natural partners. (2) Timeouts and timing measurements are natural partners. (3) Promises, retries, and timeouts seem to be the most important generic features for interservice clients.

(Hattip will not try to support streams, because generically supporting both Promises-with-retries and streams requires more complexity than Hattip wants.)

API

const { hattip } = require('hattip');

hattip(...parameters);
hattip.request(...parameters);
hattip.get(...parameters);
hattip.post(...parameters);
hattip.put(...parameters);
hattip.patch(...parameters);
hattip.delete(...parameters);

hattip and hattip.request are equivalent. Then there are shortcut functions for calling hattip with a specific HTTP method. All of these have the same signature.

Parameters

hattip(options)
hattip(url[, options])
hattip(createClientRequest[, options])

If the first argument is a string or URL, it is the url parameter, as in the native http.request(url[, options]).

If the first argument is a function (createClientRequest), it must be a synchronous function that returns a native ClientRequest, such as the one you get from http.request.

options extend the options of the native http.request. All of the native options are available, as well as the following Hattip options:

retry {Function}: A function that defines retry behavior. If this is not provided, no retries are attempted. See "Retries".
timeoutRequest {number}: See "Timings and timeouts".
timeoutResponse {number}: See "Timings and timeouts".
timeoutEnd {number}: See "Timings and timeouts".
timeoutIdleSocket {number}: See "Timings and timeouts".
measureTimings {boolean}: If true, the HattipResponse will have a timings property that tells you how long the communication's phases took. timings are also provided if any timeout* options are set, so this option is only necessary if you don't use any timeout* options. See "Timings and timeouts".

Returns

A Promise that settles in one of the following ways:

Resolves with a HattipResponse, if a response was received with a 2xx status code.
Rejects with a HattipResponseError, if a response was received with a non-2xx status code.
Rejects with an Error.

If retries are enabled (see "Retries"), the settled value will have two additional properties that are useful for troubleshooting:

attemptCount {number}: The total number of attempts made. This number includes the first request (which wasn't a retry, just a try).
failedAttempts {Array<HattipResponseError | Error>}: The results from every prior failed attempt.

For example, if the request received a 503 response once, then retried and got a 503 again, then retried and succeeded with a 200, the Promise would resolve with a HattipResponse, and response.attemptCount would be 3 and response.failedAttempts would include two HattipResponseErrors to look at. If the request tried three times and each time received a 503, the Promise would reject with a HattipResponseError with equivalent properties.

`HattipResponse`

Instances have the following properties:

statusCode {number}: From incomingMessage.statusCode.
ok {boolean}: true if statusCode is a 2xx, as with the Fetch API's ok.
headers {Object}: From incomingMessage.headers.
body {*}: The aggregated response body. If the response's Content-Type header includes application/json, the body is parsed with JSON.parse().
timings {Timings}: If the option measureTimings is true, this property exposes those timings. See "Timings and timeouts".
incomingMessage {IncomingMessage} : The incomingMessage. This property is not enumerable.
clientRequest {ClientRequest}: The clientRequest. This property is not enumerable.

`HattipResponseError`

HattipResponseErrors represent responses that are not ok: they have a non-2xx status code.

Instances have the following properties:

statusCode {number}: See HattipResponse.statusCode.
body {*}: See HattipResponse.body.
response {HattipResponse}: The HattipResponse.

Retries

Here are some edifying articles on retries, from your favorite cloud providers:

With Hattip, retries are attempted if a retry function is provided and one of the following is true:

The error has a code property indicating a network failure: ETIMEDOUT, ECONNRESET, EADDRINUSE, ECONNREFUSED, EPIPE, ENOTFOUND, ENETUNREACH, EAI_AGAIN.
The error is a HattipResponseError with a statusCode that is >= 500, 408, or 429.
retry does not return false.

Hattip does not try to block you from using retries on non-idempotent requests (like many POSTs): when you make requests that are not idempotent, do not provide retryBackoff.

retry must be a synchronous function that returns the number of milliseconds to wait before retrying, or false if no more retries should be attempted. The retry function receives a single object argument with the following properties:

retryIndex {number}: Starts at 0, since this function is first called on the first retry.
error {Error | HattipResponseError}: The error that triggered the retry. If it's an Error object, it's probably from the ClientRequest (e.g. a TCP connection failure); and if it's a HattipResponseError, the response was received but indicated a retriable failure (e.g. a 503 status code).

hattipBackoff

You might want a truncated exponential backoff following this general pattern (see the articles linked above): Math.min(maxTimeout, Math.pow(2, retryIndex) * minTimeout * jitter). Also, on the first retry you may might to return a very low number, like 1, since TCP connection blips can often be overcome with an immediate retry. Or maybe you don't.

Hattip exports the hattipBackoff shortcut, which you can use to create your own backoff functions with features like these. It does provide defaults, but you should think hard about setting your own situation-specific values. It accepts a single object argument, with the following properties, and returns a backoff function you can pass to retry:

limit {number}: Maximum number of retries to attempt. Default: 3.
minDelay {number}: Minimum number of milliseconds to wait before retrying. Default: 100.
maxDelay {number}: Maximum number of milliseconds to wait before retrying. Default: 1000.
jitter {boolean}: If true, the delay will be multipled by a random number between 1 and 2. Default: true.
fastFirst {boolean}: If true, the delay of the first retry will be 1 millisecond. Default: false.

Examples

Each example shows the same backoff accomplished manually or with hattipBackoff.

const { hattipBackoff } = require('hattip');

// Retry once right away, then up to 5 more times (a total of 6) with a
// maximum delay of 2s and some jitter.
hattip.get(url, {
  retry({ retryIndex }) {
    if (retryIndex === 0) return 1;
    if (retryIndex > 5) return false;
    return Math.min(2000, Math.pow(2, retryIndex) * 50 * (Math.random() + 1));
  }
});
hattip.get(url, {
  retry: hattipBackoff({
    limit: 6,
    minDelay: 50,
    maxDelay: 2000,
    fastFirst: true,
  })
});

// Retry like the AWS SDK.
hattip.get(url, {
  retryBackoff({ retryIndex }) {
    if (retryIndex > 3) return false;
    return Math.random() * Math.pow(2, retryIndex) * 100
  }
});
// Not quite the same jitter
hattip.get(url, {
  retry: hattipBackoff({
    maxDelay: Infinity,
    jitter: false,
  })
});
// 188.4235818647642, 355.48425553603977, 732.9242677035347
// 63.28274629759672, 205.58176727597007, 295.59627027146985


// Retry at a leisurely pace, up to 5 times, with no jitter.
hattip.get(url, {
  retryBackoff({ retryIndex }) {
    if (retryIndex === 6) return false;
    return Math.min(10000, Math.pow(2, retryIndex) * 1000);
  }
});
hattip.get(url, {
  retry: hattipBackoff({
    limit: 5,
    minDelay: 1000,
    maxDelay: 10000,
    jitter: false,
  })
});
// 2000, 4000, 8000, 10000, 10000

Timings and timeouts

If you set measureTimings to true or use any of the timeout options, the HattipResponse will have a timings property showing the duration of the following successive communication phases:

socket: Ends with the assignment of a socket (the socket event of ClientRequest).
dns: Ends with the DNS resolution of the request's host (the lookup event of Socket).
tcpConnect: Ends with the successful establishment of a TCP connection (the connect event of Socket).
tls: Ends with a successful TLS handshake (the secureConnect event of Socket). Will be 0 if the request does not involve TLS.
upload: Ends when the request has finished sending its data (the finish event of ClientRequest).
response: Ends when the client has received the first bytes of the response (the response event of ClientRequest).
download: Ends when the client has consumed all the response's data (the end event of IncomingMessage).
total: The total duration of all the above phases.

Phases will be 0 if they are skipped (e.g. an error occurred so we didn't make it to the end, or no TCP connection needs to be made because the request is using an existing persistent connection).

With this information in hand, you can determine reasonable timeout values. You can set one, none, or all of Hattip's timeout options. In every case, if the timeout is reached, Hattip will abort the request and reject with a HattipTimeoutError.

timeoutIdleSocket: The native http.request offers a single timeout option (the equivalent of Socket#setTimeout). If you use it, a timeout event will be emitted from the ClientRequest if the socket stays idle for your timeout period, at an point during communication. Hattip's timeoutIdleSocket option augments this feature by automatically aborting the timed-out request, not just emitting the event.

timeoutRequest: This timeout regulates the period between creating the request and sending it all to the server. Relevant timings: socket + dns + tcpConnect + tls + upload.

timeoutResponse: This timeout regulates the period between sending the request and receiving the first bytes of the response. Relevant timings: response.

timeoutTotal: This timeout regulates the total period between creating the request and consuming all the data from the response. Relevant timings: total.