Cordova Advanced HTTP

Cordova / Phonegap plugin for communicating with HTTP servers. Supports iOS and Android. This is a fork of Wymsee's Cordova-HTTP plugin.

Advantages over Javascript requests

• Background threading - all requests are done in a background thread.
• Handling of HTTP code 401 - read more at Issue CB-2415.
• SSL Pinning - read more at LumberBlog.

Updates

Please check CHANGELOG.md for details about updating to a new version.

Installation

The plugin conforms to the Cordova plugin specification, it can be installed using the Cordova / Phonegap command line interface.

phonegap plugin add cordova-plugin-advanced-http

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-advanced-http

Usage

Without AngularJS

This plugin registers a global object located at cordova.plugin.http.

With AngularJS

This plugin creates a cordovaHTTP service inside of a cordovaHTTP module. You must load the module when you create your app's module.

var app = angular.module('myApp', ['ngRoute', 'ngAnimate', 'cordovaHTTP']);

You can then inject the cordovaHTTP service into your controllers. The functions can then be used identically to the examples shown below except that instead of accepting success and failure callback functions, each function returns a promise. For more information on promises in AngularJS read the AngularJS docs. For more info on promises in general check out this article on html5rocks. Make sure that you load cordova.js or phonegap.js after AngularJS is loaded.

Synchronous Functions

getBasicAuthHeader

This returns an object representing a basic HTTP Authorization header of the form {'Authorization': 'Basic base64encodedusernameandpassword'}

var header = cordova.plugin.http.getBasicAuthHeader('user', 'password');

useBasicAuth

This sets up all future requests to use Basic HTTP authentication with the given username and password.

cordova.plugin.http.useBasicAuth('user', 'password');

setHeader

Set a header for all future requests to a specified host. Takes a hostname, a header and a value.

cordova.plugin.http.setHeader('Hostname', 'Header', 'Value');

You can also define headers used for all hosts by using wildcard character "*" or providing only two params.

cordova.plugin.http.setHeader('*', 'Header', 'Value');
cordova.plugin.http.setHeader('Header', 'Value');

The hostname also includes the port number. If you define a header for www.example.com it will not match following URL http://www.example.com:8080.

// will match http://www.example.com/...
cordova.plugin.http.setHeader('www.example.com', 'Header', 'Value');

// will match http://www.example.com:8080/...
cordova.plugin.http.setHeader('www.example.com:8080', 'Header', 'Value');

disableRedirect

If set to true, it won't follow redirects automatically. This is a global setting.

cordova.plugin.http.disableRedirect(true);

setDataSerializer

Set the data serializer which will be used for all future PATCH, POST and PUT requests. Takes a string representing the name of the serializer.

cordova.plugin.http.setDataSerializer('urlencoded');

You can choose one of these two:

• urlencoded: send data as url encoded content in body (content type "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")
• json: send data as JSON encoded content in body (content type "application/json")

Caution: urlencoded does not support serializing deep structures whereas json does.

setRequestTimeout

Set how long to wait for a request to respond, in seconds.

cordova.plugin.http.setRequestTimeout(5.0);

getCookieString

Returns saved cookies (as string) matching given URL.

cordova.plugin.http.getCookieString(url);

setCookie

Add a custom cookie. Takes a URL, a cookie string and an options object. See ToughCookie documentation for allowed options.

cordova.plugin.http.setCookie(url, cookie, options);

clearCookies

Clear the cookie store.

cordova.plugin.http.clearCookies();

Asynchronous Functions

These functions all take success and error callbacks as their last 2 arguments.

enableSSLPinning

Enable or disable SSL pinning. This defaults to false.

To use SSL pinning you must include at least one .cer SSL certificate in your app project. You can pin to your server certificate or to one of the issuing CA certificates. For ios include your certificate in the root level of your bundle (just add the .cer file to your project/target at the root level). For android include your certificate in your project's platforms/android/assets folder. In both cases all .cer files found will be loaded automatically. If you only have a .pem certificate see this stackoverflow answer. You want to convert it to a DER encoded certificate with a .cer extension.

As an alternative, you can store your .cer files in the www/certificates folder.

cordova.plugin.http.enableSSLPinning(true, function() {
  console.log('success!');
}, function() {
  console.log('error :(');
});

acceptAllCerts

Accept all SSL certificates. Or disable accepting all certificates. This defaults to false.

cordova.plugin.http.acceptAllCerts(true, function() {
  console.log('success!');
}, function() {
  console.log('error :(');
});

validateDomainName

This function was removed in v1.6.2. Domain name validation is disabled automatically when you enable "acceptAllCerts".

removeCookies

Remove all cookies associated with a given URL.

cordova.plugin.http.removeCookies(url, callback);

post

Execute a POST request. Takes a URL, data, and headers.

success

The success function receives a response object with 3 properties: status, data, and headers. status is the HTTP response code as numeric value. data is the response from the server as a string. headers is an object with the headers. The keys of the returned object are the header names and the values are the respective header values. All header names are lowercase.

Here's a quick example:

{
  status: 200,
  data: '{"id": 12, "message": "test"}',
  headers: {
    'content-length': '247'
  }
}

Most apis will return JSON meaning you'll want to parse the data like in the example below:

cordova.plugin.http.post('https://google.com/', {
  id: 12,
  message: 'test'
}, { Authorization: 'OAuth2: token' }, function(response) {
  // prints 200
  console.log(response.status);
  try {
    response.data = JSON.parse(response.data);
    // prints test
    console.log(response.data.message);
  } catch(e) {
    console.error('JSON parsing error');
  }
}, function(response) {
  // prints 403
  console.log(response.status);

  //prints Permission denied
  console.log(response.error);
});

failure

The error function receives a response object with 3 properties: status, error and headers. status is the HTTP response code as numeric value. error is the error response from the server as a string. headers is an object with the headers. The keys of the returned object are the header names and the values are the respective header values. All header names are lowercase.

Here's a quick example:

{
  status: 403,
  error: 'Permission denied',
  headers: {
    'content-length': '247'
  }
}

get

Execute a GET request. Takes a URL, parameters, and headers. See the post documentation for details on what is returned on success and failure.

cordova.plugin.http.get('https://google.com/', {
  id: 12,
  message: 'test'
}, { Authorization: 'OAuth2: token' }, function(response) {
  console.log(response.status);
}, function(response) {
  console.error(response.error);
});

put

Execute a PUT request. Takes a URL, data, and headers. See the post documentation for details on what is returned on success and failure.

patch

Execute a PATCH request. Takes a URL, data, and headers. See the post documentation for details on what is returned on success and failure.

delete

Execute a DELETE request. Takes a URL, parameters, and headers. See the post documentation for details on what is returned on success and failure.

head

Execute a HEAD request. Takes a URL, parameters, and headers. See the post documentation for details on what is returned on success and failure.

uploadFile

Uploads a file saved on the device. Takes a URL, parameters, headers, filePath, and the name of the parameter to pass the file along as. See the post documentation for details on what is returned on success and failure.

cordova.plugin.http.uploadFile("https://google.com/", {
    id: 12,
    message: 'test'
}, { Authorization: 'OAuth2: token' }, 'file:///somepicture.jpg', 'picture', function(response) {
    console.log(response.status);
}, function(response) {
    console.error(response.error);
});

downloadFile

Downloads a file and saves it to the device. Takes a URL, parameters, headers, and a filePath. See post documentation for details on what is returned on failure. On success this function returns a cordova FileEntry object.

cordova.plugin.http.downloadFile("https://google.com/", {
  id: 12,
  message: 'test'
}, { Authorization: 'OAuth2: token' }, 'file:///somepicture.jpg', function(entry) {
  // prints the filename
  console.log(entry.name);

  // prints the filePath
  console.log(entry.fullPath);
}, function(response) {
  console.error(response.error);
});

Libraries

This plugin utilizes some awesome open source libraries:

• iOS - AFNetworking (MIT licensed)
• Android - http-request (MIT licensed)
• Cookie handling - tough-cookie (BSD-3-Clause licensed)

We made a few modifications to the networking libraries.

Contribute & Develop

We've set up a separate document for our contribution guidelines.