XMLHttpRequest module not defined/found

This is my code:

var XMLHttpRequest = require("xmlhttprequest").XMLHttpRequest;
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("GET", "//URL")
xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-Type: application/json", "Authorization: Basic //AuthKey");
xhr.send();

I am getting the error:

Cannot find module 'xmlhttprequest'

When I remove the first line, I am getting:

XMLHttpRequest is not defined

I have searched all over and people have mentioned a problem with Node.js here and there but my installation of Node was correct so I'm not sure what the issue is.

Answers:

XMLHttpRequest is a built-in object in web browsers.

It is not distributed with Node; you have to install it separately,

Install it with npm,
```
npm install xmlhttprequest
```

Now you can require it in your code.

var XMLHttpRequest = require("xmlhttprequest").XMLHttpRequest;
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

That said, the http module is the built-in tool for making HTTP requests from Node.

Axios is a library for making HTTP requests which is available for Node and browsers that is very popular these days.

Since the last update of the xmlhttprequest module was around 2 years ago, in some cases it does not work as expected.

So instead, you can use the xhr2 module. In other words:

var XMLHttpRequest = require("xmlhttprequest").XMLHttpRequest;
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

becomes:

var XMLHttpRequest = require('xhr2');
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

But ... of course, there are more popular modules like Axios, because -for example- uses promises:

// Make a request for a user with a given ID
axios.get('/user?ID=12345').then(function (response) {
    console.log(response);
}).catch(function (error) {
    console.log(error);
});

With the xhr2 library you can globally overwrite XMLHttpRequest from your JS code. This allows you to use external libraries in node, that were intended to be run from browsers / assume they are run in a browser.

global.XMLHttpRequest = require('xhr2');

XMLHttpRequest module not defined/found

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