Printing out the Request?

First of all, I love node. To say I love node, I haven't had enough exposure to other languages. So, I am a bad lover. I am not economical. But, that gives me a chance to dig in to Node further. So, today I am going to print out request when we make a request to a server. By the way, I am not just console logging which is way too easy to view and not really helping to save the content to a text file, which is I am about to show you how.

First of all, it wasn't very successful.

Why? Because I thought maybe I can just stringify the object

const http = require('http');
const fs = require('fs')

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    res.write('hello darling')
    const text = JSON.stringify(req)
    fs.writeFile("./request.txt", text, err => {
        if (err) {
            console.log(err)
            return
        }

    })
    res.end()
})

server.listen(5000)

When you run this, you will get the following error

const text = JSON.stringify(req, null, 2)
                      ^

TypeError: Converting circular structure to JSON
    --> starting at object with constructor 'Socket'
    |     property 'parser' -> object with constructor 'HTTPParser'
    --- property 'socket' closes the circle
    at JSON.stringify (<anonymous>)
    at Server.<anonymous> (/Users/matheism/Desktop/aws-practice/httpserver.js:7:23)
    at Server.emit (node:events:390:28)
    at parserOnIncoming (node:_http_server:951:12)
    at HTTPParser.parserOnHeadersComplete (node:_http_common:128:17)

What the hell? Why does it not make a string object as requested? What is circular structure? And, what makes it not able to be a string? Come on! After frustration, I google 'how to print circular structure to JSON'

You can find a very neat solution here:

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-to-print-a-circular-structure-in-a-json-like-format-using-javascript/

But I did not use it cuz that was not the solution I initially found.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11616630/how-can-i-print-a-circular-structure-in-a-json-like-format

In short, util.inspect will give me the result that I wish in my head.

const http = require('http');
const fs = require('fs')
//you need to import util first
const util = require('util')

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    res.write('hello darling')
    const text = util.inspect(req)
    fs.writeFile("./request.txt", text, err => {
        if (err) {
            console.log(err)
            return
        }

    })
    res.end()
})

server.listen(5000)

Then, here is the end result. Request.txt is filled with text demonstrating the request parameters.

IncomingMessage {
_readableState: ReadableState {
objectMode: false,
highWaterMark: 16384,
buffer: BufferList { head: null, tail: null, length: 0 },
length: 0,
pipes: [],
flowing: null,
ended: false,
endEmitted: false,
reading: false,
constructed: true,
sync: true,
needReadable: false,
emittedReadable: false,
readableListening: false,
resumeScheduled: false,
errorEmitted: false,
emitClose: true,
autoDestroy: true,
destroyed: false,
errored: null,
closed: false,
closeEmitted: false,
defaultEncoding: 'utf8',
awaitDrainWriters: null,
multiAwaitDrain: false,
readingMore: true,
dataEmitted: false,
decoder: null,
encoding: null,
[Symbol(kPaused)]: null
},
_events: [Object: null prototype] { end: [Function: clearRequestTimeout] },
_eventsCount: 1,
_maxListeners: undefined,
socket: Socket {
connecting: false,
_hadError: false,
_parent: null,
_host: null,
_readableState: ReadableState {
objectMode: false,
highWaterMark: 16384,
buffer: BufferList { head: null, tail: null, length: 0 },
length: 0,
pipes: [],
flowing: true,
ended: false,
endEmitted: false,
reading: true,
constructed: true,
sync: false,
needReadable: true,
emittedReadable: false,
readableListening: false,
resumeScheduled: false,
errorEmitted: false,
emitClose: false,
autoDestroy: true,
destroyed: false,
errored: null,
closed: false,
closeEmitted: false,
defaultEncoding: 'utf8',
awaitDrainWriters: null,
multiAwaitDrain: false,
readingMore: false,
dataEmitted: false,
decoder: null,
encoding: null,
[Symbol(kPaused)]: false
},
_events: [Object: null prototype] {
end: [Array],
timeout: [Function: socketOnTimeout],
data: [Function: bound socketOnData],
error: [Function: socketOnError],
close: [Array],
drain: [Function: bound socketOnDrain],
resume: [Function: onSocketResume],
pause: [Function: onSocketPause]
},
_eventsCount: 8,
_maxListeners: undefined,
_writableState: WritableState {
objectMode: false,
highWaterMark: 16384,
finalCalled: false,
needDrain: false,
ending: false,
ended: false,
finished: false,
destroyed: false,
decodeStrings: false,
defaultEncoding: 'utf8',
length: 149,
writing: false,
corked: 1,
sync: false,
bufferProcessing: false,
onwrite: [Function: bound onwrite],
writecb: null,
writelen: 0,
afterWriteTickInfo: null,
buffered: [Array],
bufferedIndex: 0,
allBuffers: false,
allNoop: false,
pendingcb: 4,
constructed: true,
prefinished: false,
errorEmitted: false,
emitClose: false,
autoDestroy: true,
errored: null,
closed: false,
closeEmitted: false,
[Symbol(kOnFinished)]: []
},
allowHalfOpen: true,
_sockname: null,
_pendingData: null,
_pendingEncoding: '',
server: Server {
maxHeaderSize: undefined,
insecureHTTPParser: undefined,
_events: [Object: null prototype],
_eventsCount: 2,
_maxListeners: undefined,
_connections: 1,
_handle: [TCP],
_usingWorkers: false,
_workers: [],
_unref: false,
allowHalfOpen: true,
pauseOnConnect: false,
httpAllowHalfOpen: false,
timeout: 0,
keepAliveTimeout: 5000,
maxHeadersCount: null,
maxRequestsPerSocket: 0,
headersTimeout: 60000,
requestTimeout: 0,
_connectionKey: '6::::5000',
[Symbol(IncomingMessage)]: [Function: IncomingMessage],
[Symbol(ServerResponse)]: [Function: ServerResponse],
Symbol(kCapture): false,
[Symbol(async_id_symbol)]: 2
},
_server: Server {
maxHeaderSize: undefined,
insecureHTTPParser: undefined,
_events: [Object: null prototype],
_eventsCount: 2,
_maxListeners: undefined,
_connections: 1,
_handle: [TCP],
_usingWorkers: false,
_workers: [],
_unref: false,
allowHalfOpen: true,
pauseOnConnect: false,
httpAllowHalfOpen: false,
timeout: 0,
keepAliveTimeout: 5000,
maxHeadersCount: null,
maxRequestsPerSocket: 0,
headersTimeout: 60000,
requestTimeout: 0,
_connectionKey: '6::::5000',
[Symbol(IncomingMessage)]: [Function: IncomingMessage],
[Symbol(ServerResponse)]: [Function: ServerResponse],
Symbol(kCapture): false,
[Symbol(async_id_symbol)]: 2
},
parser: HTTPParser {
'0': [Function: bound setRequestTimeout],
'1': [Function: parserOnHeaders],
'2': [Function: parserOnHeadersComplete],
'3': [Function: parserOnBody],
'4': [Function: parserOnMessageComplete],
'5': [Function: bound onParserExecute],
'6': [Function: bound onParserTimeout],
_headers: [],
_url: '',
socket: [Circular 1],
incoming: [Circular *2],
outgoing: null,
maxHeaderPairs: 2000,
_consumed: true,
onIncoming: [Function: bound parserOnIncoming],
[Symbol(owner_symbol)]: [HTTPServerAsyncResource]
},
on: [Function: socketListenerWrap],
addListener: [Function: socketListenerWrap],
prependListener: [Function: socketListenerWrap],
setEncoding: [Function: socketSetEncoding],
_paused: false,
_httpMessage: ServerResponse {
_events: [Object: null prototype],
_eventsCount: 1,
_maxListeners: undefined,
outputData: [],
outputSize: 0,
writable: true,
destroyed: false,
_last: false,
chunkedEncoding: true,
shouldKeepAlive: true,
maxRequestsOnConnectionReached: false,
_defaultKeepAlive: true,
useChunkedEncodingByDefault: true,
sendDate: true,
_removedConnection: false,
_removedContLen: false,
_removedTE: false,
_contentLength: null,
_hasBody: true,
_trailer: '',
finished: false,
_headerSent: true,
_closed: false,
socket: [Circular *1],
_header: 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n' +
'Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2022 20:34:40 GMT\r\n' +
'Connection: keep-alive\r\n' +
'Keep-Alive: timeout=5\r\n' +
'Transfer-Encoding: chunked\r\n' +
'\r\n',
_keepAliveTimeout: 5000,
_onPendingData: [Function: bound updateOutgoingData],
req: [Circular *2],
_sent100: false,
_expect_continue: false,
statusMessage: 'OK',
statusCode: 200,
Symbol(kCapture): false,
[Symbol(kNeedDrain)]: false,
[Symbol(corked)]: 0,
[Symbol(kOutHeaders)]: null
},
timeout: 0,
[Symbol(async_id_symbol)]: 4,
[Symbol(kHandle)]: TCP {
reading: true,
onconnection: null,
_consumed: true,
[Symbol(owner_symbol)]: [Circular *1]
},
[Symbol(kSetNoDelay)]: false,
[Symbol(lastWriteQueueSize)]: 0,
[Symbol(timeout)]: Timeout {
_idleTimeout: -1,
_idlePrev: null,
_idleNext: null,
_idleStart: 6331,
_onTimeout: null,
_timerArgs: undefined,
_repeat: null,
_destroyed: true,
[Symbol(refed)]: false,
[Symbol(kHasPrimitive)]: false,
[Symbol(asyncId)]: 14,
[Symbol(triggerId)]: 10
},
[Symbol(kBuffer)]: null,
[Symbol(kBufferCb)]: null,
[Symbol(kBufferGen)]: null,
Symbol(kCapture): false,
[Symbol(kBytesRead)]: 0,
[Symbol(kBytesWritten)]: 0,
Symbol(RequestTimeout): undefined
},
httpVersionMajor: 1,
httpVersionMinor: 1,
httpVersion: '1.1',
complete: false,
rawHeaders: [
'Host',
'localhost:5000',
'Connection',
'keep-alive',
'sec-ch-ua',
'" Not;A Brand";v="99", "Google Chrome";v="97", "Chromium";v="97"',
'sec-ch-ua-mobile',
'?0',
'User-Agent',
'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/97.0.4692.99 Safari/537.36',
'sec-ch-ua-platform',
'"macOS"',
'Accept',
'image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,image/svg+xml,image/,/;q=0.8',
'Sec-Fetch-Site',
'same-origin',
'Sec-Fetch-Mode',
'no-cors',
'Sec-Fetch-Dest',
'image',
'Referer',
'http://localhost:5000/',
'Accept-Encoding',
'gzip, deflate, br',
'Accept-Language',
'en-US,en;q=0.9,ko;q=0.8'
],
rawTrailers: [],
aborted: false,
upgrade: false,
url: '/favicon.ico',
method: 'GET',
statusCode: null,
statusMessage: null,
client: Socket {
connecting: false,
_hadError: false,
_parent: null,
_host: null,
_readableState: ReadableState {
objectMode: false,
highWaterMark: 16384,
buffer: BufferList { head: null, tail: null, length: 0 },
length: 0,
pipes: [],
flowing: true,
ended: false,
endEmitted: false,
reading: true,
constructed: true,
sync: false,
needReadable: true,
emittedReadable: false,
readableListening: false,
resumeScheduled: false,
errorEmitted: false,
emitClose: false,
autoDestroy: true,
destroyed: false,
errored: null,
closed: false,
closeEmitted: false,
defaultEncoding: 'utf8',
awaitDrainWriters: null,
multiAwaitDrain: false,
readingMore: false,
dataEmitted: false,
decoder: null,
encoding: null,
[Symbol(kPaused)]: false
},
_events: [Object: null prototype] {
end: [Array],
timeout: [Function: socketOnTimeout],
data: [Function: bound socketOnData],
error: [Function: socketOnError],
close: [Array],
drain: [Function: bound socketOnDrain],
resume: [Function: onSocketResume],
pause: [Function: onSocketPause]
},
_eventsCount: 8,
_maxListeners: undefined,
_writableState: WritableState {
objectMode: false,
highWaterMark: 16384,
finalCalled: false,
needDrain: false,
ending: false,
ended: false,
finished: false,
destroyed: false,
decodeStrings: false,
defaultEncoding: 'utf8',
length: 149,
writing: false,
corked: 1,
sync: false,
bufferProcessing: false,
onwrite: [Function: bound onwrite],
writecb: null,
writelen: 0,
afterWriteTickInfo: null,
buffered: [Array],
bufferedIndex: 0,
allBuffers: false,
allNoop: false,
pendingcb: 4,
constructed: true,
prefinished: false,
errorEmitted: false,
emitClose: false,
autoDestroy: true,
errored: null,
closed: false,
closeEmitted: false,
[Symbol(kOnFinished)]: []
},
allowHalfOpen: true,
_sockname: null,
_pendingData: null,
_pendingEncoding: '',
server: Server {
maxHeaderSize: undefined,
insecureHTTPParser: undefined,
_events: [Object: null prototype],
_eventsCount: 2,
_maxListeners: undefined,
_connections: 1,
_handle: [TCP],
_usingWorkers: false,
_workers: [],
_unref: false,
allowHalfOpen: true,
pauseOnConnect: false,
httpAllowHalfOpen: false,
timeout: 0,
keepAliveTimeout: 5000,
maxHeadersCount: null,
maxRequestsPerSocket: 0,
headersTimeout: 60000,
requestTimeout: 0,
_connectionKey: '6::::5000',
[Symbol(IncomingMessage)]: [Function: IncomingMessage],
[Symbol(ServerResponse)]: [Function: ServerResponse],
Symbol(kCapture): false,
[Symbol(async_id_symbol)]: 2
},
_server: Server {
maxHeaderSize: undefined,
insecureHTTPParser: undefined,
_events: [Object: null prototype],
_eventsCount: 2,
_maxListeners: undefined,
_connections: 1,
_handle: [TCP],
_usingWorkers: false,
_workers: [],
_unref: false,
allowHalfOpen: true,
pauseOnConnect: false,
httpAllowHalfOpen: false,
timeout: 0,
keepAliveTimeout: 5000,
maxHeadersCount: null,
maxRequestsPerSocket: 0,
headersTimeout: 60000,
requestTimeout: 0,
_connectionKey: '6::::5000',
[Symbol(IncomingMessage)]: [Function: IncomingMessage],
[Symbol(ServerResponse)]: [Function: ServerResponse],
Symbol(kCapture): false,
[Symbol(async_id_symbol)]: 2
},
parser: HTTPParser {
'0': [Function: bound setRequestTimeout],
'1': [Function: parserOnHeaders],
'2': [Function: parserOnHeadersComplete],
'3': [Function: parserOnBody],
'4': [Function: parserOnMessageComplete],
'5': [Function: bound onParserExecute],
'6': [Function: bound onParserTimeout],
_headers: [],
_url: '',
socket: [Circular *1],
incoming: [Circular *2],
outgoing: null,
maxHeaderPairs: 2000,
_consumed: true,
onIncoming: [Function: bound parserOnIncoming],
[Symbol(owner_symbol)]: [HTTPServerAsyncResource]
},
on: [Function: socketListenerWrap],
addListener: [Function: socketListenerWrap],
prependListener: [Function: socketListenerWrap],
setEncoding: [Function: socketSetEncoding],
_paused: false,
_httpMessage: ServerResponse {
_events: [Object: null prototype],
_eventsCount: 1,
_maxListeners: undefined,
outputData: [],
outputSize: 0,
writable: true,
destroyed: false,
_last: false,
chunkedEncoding: true,
shouldKeepAlive: true,
maxRequestsOnConnectionReached: false,
_defaultKeepAlive: true,
useChunkedEncodingByDefault: true,
sendDate: true,
_removedConnection: false,
_removedContLen: false,
_removedTE: false,
_contentLength: null,
_hasBody: true,
_trailer: '',
finished: false,
_headerSent: true,
_closed: false,
socket: [Circular *1],
_header: 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n' +
'Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2022 20:34:40 GMT\r\n' +
'Connection: keep-alive\r\n' +
'Keep-Alive: timeout=5\r\n' +
'Transfer-Encoding: chunked\r\n' +
'\r\n',
_keepAliveTimeout: 5000,
_onPendingData: [Function: bound updateOutgoingData],
req: [Circular *2],
_sent100: false,
_expect_continue: false,
statusMessage: 'OK',
statusCode: 200,
Symbol(kCapture): false,
[Symbol(kNeedDrain)]: false,
[Symbol(corked)]: 0,
[Symbol(kOutHeaders)]: null
},
timeout: 0,
[Symbol(async_id_symbol)]: 4,
[Symbol(kHandle)]: TCP {
reading: true,
onconnection: null,
_consumed: true,
[Symbol(owner_symbol)]: [Circular *1]
},
[Symbol(kSetNoDelay)]: false,
[Symbol(lastWriteQueueSize)]: 0,
[Symbol(timeout)]: Timeout {
_idleTimeout: -1,
_idlePrev: null,
_idleNext: null,
_idleStart: 6331,
_onTimeout: null,
_timerArgs: undefined,
_repeat: null,
_destroyed: true,
[Symbol(refed)]: false,
[Symbol(kHasPrimitive)]: false,
[Symbol(asyncId)]: 14,
[Symbol(triggerId)]: 10
},
[Symbol(kBuffer)]: null,
[Symbol(kBufferCb)]: null,
[Symbol(kBufferGen)]: null,
Symbol(kCapture): false,
[Symbol(kBytesRead)]: 0,
[Symbol(kBytesWritten)]: 0,
Symbol(RequestTimeout): undefined
},
_consuming: false,
_dumped: false,

host: 'localhost:5000',
connection: 'keep-alive',
'sec-ch-ua': '" Not;A Brand";v="99", "Google Chrome";v="97", "Chromium";v="97"',
'sec-ch-ua-mobile': '?0',
'user-agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/97.0.4692.99 Safari/537.36',
'sec-ch-ua-platform': '"macOS"',
accept: 'image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,image/svg+xml,image/*,*/*;q=0.8',
'sec-fetch-site': 'same-origin',
'sec-fetch-mode': 'no-cors',
'sec-fetch-dest': 'image',
referer: 'http://localhost:5000/',
'accept-encoding': 'gzip, deflate, br',
'accept-language': 'en-US,en;q=0.9,ko;q=0.8'

},

}

Tada! i didn't do triple backtick to make a code block for the last one! what's going on?