Nodejs Ajax Call with XMLHttpRequest Header

Question

I am trying to write a script for Hubot to make an AJAX call to Strawpoll.me. I have a cURL command that works exactly how I want but I am having trouble translating that into a Node.js function.

curl --header "X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest" --request POST --data "options=1&options=2&options=3&options=4&options=5&title=Test&multi=false&permissive=false" http://strawpoll.me/api/v2/polls

Here is what I currently have in my script.

QS = require 'querystring'

module.exports = (robot) ->
    robot.respond /strawpoll "(.*)"/i, (msg) ->
        options = msg.match[1].split('" "')
        data = QS.stringify({
          title: "Strawpoll " + Math.floor(Math.random() * 10000),
          options: options,
          multi: false,
          permissive: true
          })
        req = robot.http("http://strawpoll.me/api/v2/polls").headers({"X-Requested-With": "XMLHttpRequest"}).post(data) (err, res, body) ->
          if err
            msg.send "Encountered an error :( #{err}"
            return
          msg.reply(body)

The script version is returning {"error":"Invalid request","code":40}

I can't tell what I am doing wrong. Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

For POST requests, curl sets the Content-Type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded. Hubot uses Node's http client, which OTOH, doesn't use any defaults for the Content-Type header. Without an explicit Content-Type header, the resource at http://strawpoll.me/api/v2/polls is not able to discern the request body. You'll have to set the Content-Type header manually to mimic curl's request.

    robot.http('http://strawpoll.me/api/v2/polls')
    .headers({'X-Requested-With': 'XMLHttpRequest', 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'})
    .post(data)