dropin-request

⚡ A modern drop-in replacement for the deprecated request and request-promise-native libraries — powered by Node.js native fetch.

✨ Why this exists

If you're like me and have been using Node.js since the early days, you probably have massive codebases that rely heavily on request and later request-promise-native.

Now that both libraries are deprecated, the “official” solution is to migrate everything to native fetch. But realistically, rewriting every single line of code is painful.

That’s why dropin-request exists — just replace your require("request") (or require("request-promise-native")) with:

const request = require("dropin-request");

…and your code keeps working, powered by modern fetch under the hood 🚀.

✨ Features

• ✅ Drop-in replacement for request and request-promise-native
• ✅ Supports both callback and Promise/async usage
• ✅ Uses Node.js native fetch (no extra dependencies)
• ✅ Simple, lightweight, and future-proof
• ✅ Works with request(url, callback) or await request(url)

📦 Installation

npm install dropin-request

Requires Node.js >= 18.17.0 (first LTS with stable fetch).

🚀 Usage

Callback style (like request)

const request = require("dropin-request");

request("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1", (err, res, body) => {
  if (err) throw err;
  console.log("Status:", res.statusCode);
  console.log("Body:", body);
});

Promise / async style (like request-promise-native)

const request = require("dropin-request");

(async () => {
  try {
    const body = await request("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1", { json: true });
    console.log("Async Body:", body);
  } catch (err) {
    console.error("Error:", err);
  }
})();

Explicit HTTP methods

request.get("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1", (err, res, body) => {
  console.log(body);
});

await request.post({
  url: "https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts",
  json: true,
  body: { title: "Hello", body: "World", userId: 1 }
});

Defaults

const r2 = request.defaults({ headers: { "X-Test": "yes" } });

r2("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/1", (err, res, body) => {
  console.log(body);
});

🔄 Migration Guide

| Old request code | New dropin-request code | | ---------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | | const request = require("request"); | const request = require("dropin-request"); | | request(url, cb) | request(url, cb) (same) | | request.get(url, cb) | request.get(url, cb) (same) | | request.post(opts, cb) | request.post(opts, cb) (same) | | await request(url) (with request-promise-native) | await request(url) (same) |

Minimal to no code changes required 🚀

⚠️ Limitations & Contributions

This project is not a 100% comprehensive replacement for every feature of the original request library (e.g. multi-part and other advanced options). It covers the most common use cases and aims to make migration as painless as possible.

If you find missing features or want to enhance compatibility, contributions are very welcome! Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.

⚖️ License

MIT © 2025 Manuel Vergel