Making HTTP Client requests

The next way to mitigate computationally intensive code is to push the calculation to a backend process. To explore that strategy, we'll request computations from a backend Fibonacci server using the HTTP Client object to do so. However, before we look at that, let's first talk in general about using the HTTP Client object.

Node.js includes an HTTP Client object useful for making HTTP requests. It has enough capability to issue any kind of HTTP request, but, for example, it does not emulate a full browser, so don't get delusions of this being a full-scale test automation tool. Its scope focuses solely on the HTTP protocol. It's possible to build a browser emulator on top of this HTTP client, for example, to build a test automation tool. The HTTP Client object can be used for any kind of HTTP request, such as calling a Representational State Transfer (REST) web service.

Let's start with some code inspired by the wget or curl commands to make HTTP requests and show...