How to decode gzip or utf-8 response in node?

Question

I am using node request module to do some get request.I am getting the response body like

{
   body: '\u001f?\b\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000\u0000...............' 
}

i have the header parameters and request like this,

var params = {
          url: options.url,
          headers: {
                'Accept-Encoding': "gzip, deflate",
                'Accept': '*/*',
                'Accept-Language': 'en-US,en;q=0.5',
                'Accept-Charset' : 'utf-8',
                'Content-Type' : 'application/json',
                 'User-Agent' : 'Mozilla/5.0'
             }
         };

 request(params, function (error, response, body) {   

        //response.setEncoding('utf8');
        //response.setEncoding('binary');

        console.log(response);        
 })

I tried

 //response.setEncoding('utf8');
 //response.setEncoding('binary');

and new Buffer(response.body, 'ascii').toString('utf8') to read the body content but its not working.

how to read the body content properly as JSON ?

Remove 'Accept-Encoding': "gzip, deflate", 'cause it seems like you are getting a gripped response. — bredikhin, Dec 17 '13 at 14:26
Why can't you? You could change it to `'Accept-Encoding': ""`. — Aaron Dufour, Dec 17 '13 at 14:51
This might help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10207762/how-to-use-request-or-http-module-to-read-gzip-page-into-a-string — vinayr, Dec 17 '13 at 14:53
**See Also**: [How do I ungzip (decompress) a NodeJS request's module gzip response body?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/12148948/1366033) — KyleMit, Nov 28 '21 at 00:58

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 28 '21 at 00:51

This works using zlib.createGunzip() like this:

var http = require("http"),
    zlib = require("zlib");

var req = http.request(url, function (res) {

    // pipe the response into the gunzip to decompress
    var gunzip = zlib.createGunzip();
    res.pipe(gunzip);

    gunzip.on('data', function (data) {
        // decompression chunk ready, add it to the buffer
        buffer.push(data.toString());

    }).on("end", function () {
        // response and decompression complete, join the buffer and return
        callback(null, buffer.join(""));

    }).on("error", function (e) {
        callback(e);
    });
});

req.on('error', function (e) {
    callback(e);
});

req.end();

How to decode gzip or utf-8 response in node?

1 Answers1

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