How to get data out of a Node.js http get request

I'm trying to get my function to return the http get request, however, whatever I do it seems to get lost in the ?scope?. I'm quit new to Node.js so any help would be appreciated

function getData(){
  var http = require('http');
  var str = '';

  var options = {
        host: 'www.random.org',
        path: '/integers/?num=1&min=1&max=10&col=1&base=10&format=plain&rnd=new'
  };

  callback = function(response) {

        response.on('data', function (chunk) {
              str += chunk;
        });

        response.on('end', function () {
              console.log(str);
        });

        //return str;
  }

  var req = http.request(options, callback).end();

  // These just return undefined and empty
  console.log(req.data);
  console.log(str);
}

Of course your logs return undefined : you log before the request is done. The problem isn't scope but asynchronicity.

http.request is asynchronous, that's why it takes a callback as parameter. Do what you have to do in the callback (the one you pass to response.end):

callback = function(response) {

  response.on('data', function (chunk) {
    str += chunk;
  });

  response.on('end', function () {
    console.log(req.data);
    console.log(str);
    // your code here if you want to use the results !
  });
}

var req = http.request(options, callback).end();

Simple Working Example of Http request using node.

const http = require('https')

httprequest().then((data) => {
        const response = {
            statusCode: 200,
            body: JSON.stringify(data),
        };
    return response;
});
function httprequest() {
     return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        const options = {
            host: 'jsonplaceholder.typicode.com',
            path: '/todos',
            port: 443,
            method: 'GET'
        };
        const req = http.request(options, (res) => {
          if (res.statusCode < 200 || res.statusCode >= 300) {
                return reject(new Error('statusCode=' + res.statusCode));
            }
            var body = [];
            res.on('data', function(chunk) {
                body.push(chunk);
            });
            res.on('end', function() {
                try {
                    body = JSON.parse(Buffer.concat(body).toString());
                } catch(e) {
                    reject(e);
                }
                resolve(body);
            });
        });
        req.on('error', (e) => {
          reject(e.message);
        });
        // send the request
       req.end();
    });
}

Shorter example using http.get:

require('http').get('http://httpbin.org/ip', (res) => {
    res.setEncoding('utf8');
    res.on('data', function (body) {
        console.log(body);
    });
});

from learnyounode:

var http = require('http')  
   
http.get(options, function (response) {  
  response.setEncoding('utf8')  
  response.on('data', console.log)  
  response.on('error', console.error)  
})

'options' is the host/path variable

from learnyounode:

var http = require('http')
var bl = require('bl')

http.get(process.argv[2], function (response) {
	response.pipe(bl(function (err, data) {
		if (err)
			return console.error(err)
		data = data.toString()
		console.log(data)
	}))
})

I think it's too late to answer this question but I faced the same problem recently my use case was to call the paginated JSON API and get all the data from each pagination and append it to a single array.

const https = require('https');
const apiUrl = "https://example.com/api/movies/search/?Title=";
let finaldata = [];
let someCallBack = function(data){
  finaldata.push(...data);
  console.log(finaldata);
};
const getData = function (substr, pageNo=1, someCallBack) {
  
  let actualUrl = apiUrl + `${substr}&page=${pageNo}`;
  let mydata = []
  https.get(actualUrl, (resp) => {
    let data = '';
    resp.on('data', (chunk) => {
        data += chunk;
    });
    resp.on('end', async () => {
        if (JSON.parse(data).total_pages!==null){
          pageNo+=1;
          somCallBack(JSON.parse(data).data);
          await getData(substr, pageNo, someCallBack);
        }
    });
  }).on("error", (err) => {
      console.log("Error: " + err.message);
  });
}

getData("spiderman", pageNo=1, someCallBack);

Like @ackuser mentioned we can use other module but In my use case I had to use the node https. Hoping this will help others.

This is my solution, although for sure you can use a lot of modules that give you the object as a promise or similar. Anyway, you were missing another callback

function getData(callbackData){
  var http = require('http');
  var str = '';

  var options = {
        host: 'www.random.org',
        path: '/integers/?num=1&min=1&max=10&col=1&base=10&format=plain&rnd=new'
  };

  callback = function(response) {

        response.on('data', function (chunk) {
              str += chunk;
        });

        response.on('end', function () {
              console.log(str);
	      callbackData(str);
        });

        //return str;
  }

  var req = http.request(options, callback).end();

  // These just return undefined and empty
  console.log(req.data);
  console.log(str);
}

somewhere else

getData(function(data){
// YOUR CODE HERE!!!
})