fetchuri

Universal content fetcher for any URI type (http/https/file/data) that works in both Node.js and browsers.

Installation

npm install fetchuri

# Or install globally for CLI usage
npm install -g fetchuri

CLI Usage

# Fetch any URI from the command line
fetchuri https://api.github.com/users/github

# Set Accept header for content negotiation
fetchuri https://api.example.com/data --accept application/json

# Add custom headers
fetchuri https://api.example.com --header "Authorization: Bearer token123"
fetchuri https://api.example.com -H "User-Agent: fetchuri/0.0.1" -H "Accept: text/html"

# Pretty-print JSON
fetchuri https://api.example.com/data.json --json

# Save to file
fetchuri https://example.com --output index.html

# Fetch local file
fetchuri file:///etc/hosts

# Decode data URI
fetchuri "data:text/plain,Hello%20World"

# Show help
fetchuri --help

Library Usage

import fetchuri from 'fetchuri'

// Fetch from HTTP/HTTPS
const html = await fetchuri('https://example.com')
const json = await fetchuri('https://api.example.com/data.json')

// With Accept header for content negotiation
const jsonData = await fetchuri('https://api.example.com/data', {
  headers: { 'Accept': 'application/json' }
})

// With custom headers
const response = await fetchuri('https://api.example.com/data', {
  headers: {
    'Accept': 'application/json',
    'Authorization': 'Bearer token123',
    'User-Agent': 'MyApp/1.0'
  }
})

// Fetch from local file
const config = await fetchuri('file:///home/user/config.json')

// Fetch from data URI
const inline = await fetchuri('data:text/plain,Hello%20World')
const base64 = await fetchuri('data:application/json;base64,eyJ0ZXN0Ijp0cnVlfQ==')

// No protocol defaults to HTTPS
const page = await fetchuri('example.com')  // → https://example.com

API

fetchuri(uri: string, options?: object): Promise<string>

Fetches content from any URI and returns it as a string.

Parameters:

• uri - The URI to fetch (required)
• options - Optional configuration object
  • headers - Custom headers for HTTP/HTTPS requests

Supported protocols:

• http:// - HTTP URLs (Node.js & Browser)
• https:// - HTTPS URLs (Node.js & Browser)
• file:// - Local file paths (Node.js only)
• data: - Data URIs (RFC 2397) (Node.js & Browser)

Error Handling

try {
  const content = await fetchuri('invalid://uri')
} catch (error) {
  console.error('Fetch failed:', error.message)
}

Browser vs Node.js

This module works in both environments with these differences:

• Browser: Supports http://, https://, and data: protocols
• Node.js: Supports all protocols including file://
• Uses native fetch() in browsers, node-fetch in Node.js
• Automatically detects the environment

Use Cases

• Fetching JSON from APIs (universal)
• Loading local configuration files (Node.js)
• Reading HTML pages (universal)
• Processing data URIs from HTML (universal)
• Universal content loader for CLI tools and web apps

License

MIT