webwire

@johnhenry/webwire converts between Node’s raw http/https objects (IncomingMessage, ServerResponse, http.request()) and the Web Fetch API (Request, Response). Four small functions, no dependencies, no build step.

Node’s HTTP API predates Fetch and does not speak it. Code that works in Request/Response terms (a router, a proxy, a test harness) still has to touch Node’s sockets in exactly four places, and this package is those four places and nothing else:

You have	You want	Function
A server-side IncomingMessage	A Web Request	toWebRequest()
A Web Response	Bytes written to a ServerResponse	writeWebResponse()
A Request (or a URL)	Options for http.request()	toNodeRequestOptions()
A client-side IncomingMessage	A Web Response	toWebResponse()

A fifth pair, setTrailers() / getTrailers(), lets a Response carry HTTP trailers, which Fetch has no way to express.

Install

npm

npm install @johnhenry/webwire

Latest on npm: @johnhenry/[email protected].

Node only, no CDN build. Converts between Node's http objects and Fetch API Request/Response. Some subpaths import in a browser, but they only make sense with Node objects.

Requires Node 26 or newer (engines.node is >=26.0.0). Types ship in the package (index.d.ts). See Getting started.

The pages here

• Getting started: install, a server that answers with a Response, an outbound call that returns one
• API: every export, with signatures, options, return values and errors
• Serving: IncomingMessage in, Response out; reverse-proxy hosts, streaming, cookies, trailers, WebSocket upgrades
• Calling out: Request in, http.request() options out, Response back; buffered and streamed bodies, proxying
• Limitations and traps: what fails quietly, traps first

What it deliberately is not

It does not route, parse bodies, or make requests. toNodeRequestOptions() returns plain data and leaves issuing the request to you, and toWebResponse() does not read the response it is given. If you want a server built on this conversion, see leserve.

Family

webwire was extracted from the code its siblings had each grown a copy of. Some depend on it; the others share a theme.

• leserve: a serve() that takes a plain (Request) => Response handler. Its published 0.1.0 has a hard dependency on @johnhenry/webwire; serve() uses toWebRequest() and writeWebResponse(), and leserve keeps the old leserve/node-request and leserve/node-to-web subpaths as re-exports of toWebRequest() and toWebResponse().
• servant: depends on leserve, for toWebRequest() via leserve/node-request, so it reaches webwire only transitively. That dependency is the evidence the conversion was useful apart from running a server.
• dialback: its Server had reimplemented both server-side conversions. The dialback repository’s main now declares @johnhenry/webwire as a dependency; the published 0.0.3 does not.
• prism: an HTTP inspector whose timed-fetch.mjs calls toNodeRequestOptions() for connection details and keeps its own socket-timing hooks. Its main declares the dependency; it has no docs section here and is not on npm.
• http-converter and http-fields: no dependency in either direction; neighbours by topic only. http-converter turns HTTP text formats (raw HTTP, HAR, cURL) into Request/Response; webwire connects those objects to Node’s sockets. http-fields parses the structured values inside headers.

License

MIT

Source

github.com/johnhenry/webwire · npm