node js restler result "get" not complete when trying to return result

Question

I'm trying to get the HTML of a website using restler. But when I try to get the relevant part of result, I always get the error,

"TypeError: Cannot read property 'rawEncoded' of undefined".

'rawEncoded' sometimes is 'res'. I think it changes based on processing time.

I'm trying to get result.request.res.rawEncode from restler get result.

My function:

var rest = require('restler');

var loadHtmlUrl = function(weburl) {
    var resultstr = rest.get(weburl).on('complete', function(result) {
        var string = result.request.res.rawEncode;
        return string;
    });
    return resultstr;
};

Then:

var htmlstring = loadHtmlUrl('http://google.com');

Maybe restler is the entirely wrong way to go. Maybe I don't understand it completely. But I'm definitely stuck...

Thanks!

You have a number of mistakes in your code, check it up (e.g. equals sign after `var` in the second piece of code) — sasha.sochka, Jul 09 '13 at 22:39

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 10 '13 at 01:03

Would your return resultstr; not run before the on('complete' callback gets called because it is asynchronous, therefore resulting in your htmlstring being null? I think you need to have a callback as a parameter to your loadHtmlUrl like so:

var rest = require('restler');

var loadHtmlUrl = function(weburl, callback) {
    var resultstr = rest.get(weburl).on('complete', function(result) {
      callback(result.request.res.rawEncode);
    });
};

And then call it like so:

var htmlstring = null;
loadHtmlUrl('http://google.com', function(rawEncode) {
  htmlstring = rawEncode;
  //Do your stuff here...
});

I think that will resolve future problems you will have. However, I think the real problem you're facing is that result.request does not have the property of res. I'm thinking that my change above may fix this problem (not quite sure how). If not, then I would recommend looking at what properties result.request has as a debugging starter...

node js restler result "get" not complete when trying to return result

1 Answers1

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