# get [](http://travis-ci.org/developmentseed/node-get)
`get` is a slightly higher-level HTTP client for nodejs.
## Installation
npm install get
get has no dependencies.
For testing, you'll need make and [mocha](https://github.com/visionmedia/mocha).
For docs you'll need [docco](https://github.com/jashkenas/docco).
## Features
* Redirect following.
* Convenience functions for downloading and getting data as string.
* Binary-extension and basic binary detection.
* Configurable headers
## API
Downloads are objects in `get`.
```javascript
var dl = new get({ uri: 'http://google.com/' });
```
However, the function is [a self-calling constructor](http://ejohn.org/blog/simple-class-instantiation/), and thus the `new` keyword is not necessary:
```javascript
var dl = get({ uri: 'http://google.com/' });
```
The get constructor can also take a plain string if you don't want to give options.
```javascript
var dl = get('http://google.com/');
```
It can also take other options.
```javascript
var dl = get({
uri: 'http://google.com/',
max_redirs: 20,
});
```
Then it exposes three main methods
```javascript
dl.asString(function(err, str) {
console.log(str);
});
```
and
```javascript
dl.toDisk('myfile.txt', function(err, filename) {
console.log(err);
});
```
and finally
```javascript
dl.asBuffer(function(err, data) {
console.log(data);
});
```
There's also a lower-level API.
```javascript
dl.perform(function(err, response) {
// response is just a response object, just like
// HTTP request, except handling redirects
});
```
If you give node-get an object of settings instead of a string,
it accepts
* `uri` - the address of the resource
* `headers` - to replace its default headers with custom ones
* `max_redirs` - the number of redirects to follow before returning an error
* `no_proxy` - don't use a HTTP proxy, even if one is in `ENV`
* `encoding` - When calling `.guessEncoding()`, `get` will use this instead of the default value
## Example
```
var get = require('get');
get('http://google.com/').asString(function(err, data) {
if (err) throw err;
console.log(data);
});
```
## TODO:
* Guessing encoding wth headers
* User-customizable encodings
## Authors
* Tom MacWright (tmcw)
* Konstantin Kaefer (kkaefer)
