Node.js request.socket Property

The request.socket (Added in v0.3.0) property is an inbuilt property of the ‘http’ module which references to the underlying socket and most users don’t get access to this property. Particularly, the socket doesn’t emit ‘readable‘ events but, the socket could be accessed via request.connection. This property guarantees to being an instance of the <net.Socket> class, a subclass of <stream.Duplex>.

In order to get a response and a proper result, we need to import ‘http’ module.

const http = require('http'); 

Syntax:

request.socket

Parameters: This property does not accept any parameters.

Return Value: It returns the request data in the form of an object which contains a huge amount of data related to socket.

• <stream.Duplex>:  <stream.Duplex> or duplex stream is a stream that implements both a readable and a writable.

The below examples illustrate the use of request.socket property in Node.js.

Example 1:  Filename: index.js

// Node.js program to demonstrate the
// req.socket property

// Using require to access http module
const http = require('http');

// Requesting from google server
const req = http.get({ host: 'www.geeksforgeeks.org' });

// Ending the request
req.end();

req.once('response', (res) => {

    // Printing socket after getting response
    console.log(req.socket);

    // Printing address and port after
    // getting response
    console.log(`IP address of geeksforgeeks is
            ${req.socket.localAddress}.`);

    console.log(`Its Port is ${req.socket.localPort}.`);
});

Output:

>> <ref *1> Socket{ connecting: false,

    _hadError: false,

    _parent: null,

    _host: ‘www.geeeksforgeeks.org’… [Symbol(kBytesWritten)]: 0 }

>> IP address is 192.168.43.207

>> Its port is 56933.

Example 2: Filename: index.js

// Node.js program to demonstrate the
// req.socket property

// Using require to access http module
const { get } = require('http');

// Setting host server url
const options = { host: 'www.geeksforgeeks.org' };

// Requesting from geeksforgeeks server
const req = get(options);
req.end();

req.once('response', (res) => {

    // Printing the requestrelated data
    console.log("Status:", res.statusCode,
                        res.statusMessage);

    console.log("Host:", req.socket._host);

    console.log("Method:",
        req.socket.parser.outgoing.method);

    console.log("Parser Header:",
            req.socket.parser.outgoing._header);

    console.log("Writable:", req.socket.writable);
    console.log("Readable:", req.socket.readable);

    console.log("Http Header:",
            req.socket._httpMessage._header);

    if (req.socket._httpMessage._header ===
            req.socket.parser.outgoing._header) {
        console.log("Both headers are exactly same...")
    } else {
        console.log("Headers are not same...")
    }

    // Printing address and port after
    // getting response
    console.log(`IP address of geeksforgeeks is
        ${req.socket.localAddress}.`);

    console.log(`Its port is ${req.socket.localPort}.`);
});

Run index.js file using the following command:

node index.js

Output:

>> Status: 301 Moved Permanently

>> Host: www.geeksforgeeks.org

>> Method: GET

>> Parser Header: GET / HTTP/1.1

    Host: www.geeksforgeeks.org

    Connection: close

>> Writable: true

>> Readable: true

>> Http Header: GET / HTTP/1.1

    Host: www.geeksforgeeks.org

    Connection: close

>> Both headers are exactly same…

>> IP address is 192.168.43.207

>> Its port is 57425.

Reference: https://nodejs.org/api/http.html#http_request_socket