How to stream range http requests from buffers in NodeJS

Question

Testing http range requests in node, when we stream from

fs.createReadStream('index.html').pipe(res)

to a http res of a http server, the http client from node accepts it.

But, when I pipe a Stream of a Buffer, with:

const content = fs.readFileSync("src/index.html");
const stream = new Readable();

stream.push(
  opts.start && opts.end
    ? content.slice(opts.start, opts.end + 1)
    : content
);
stream.push(null);

stream.pipe(res);

Curl and browsers accept it, except NodeJS http client, that throws:

events.js:180
      throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
      ^

Error: Parse Error
    at Socket.socketOnData (_http_client.js:452:22)
    at Socket.emit (events.js:203:13)
    at addChunk (_stream_readable.js:294:12)
    at readableAddChunk (_stream_readable.js:275:11)
    at Socket.Readable.push (_stream_readable.js:210:10)
    at TCP.onStreamRead (internal/stream_base_commons.js:166:17)
Emitted 'error' event at:
    at Socket.socketOnData (_http_client.js:458:9)
    at Socket.emit (events.js:203:13)
    [... lines matching original stack trace ...]
    at TCP.onStreamRead (internal/stream_base_commons.js:166:17) {
  bytesParsed: 234,
  code: 'HPE_INVALID_CONSTANT',
  reason: 'Expected HTTP/'
}

---

To test it, just change the line 56 from 'read' to 'buffer':

index.js

const http = require("http");
const fs = require("fs");
const Readable = require("stream").Readable;

const stats = fs.statSync("index.html");

const handler = function(read_or_buffer) {
  return function(req, res) {
    let code = 200;
    const opts = {};
    const headers = {
      "Content-Length": stats.size,
      "Content-Type": "text/html",
      "Last-Modified": stats.mtime.toUTCString()
    };

    if (req.headers.range) {
      code = 206;

      let [x, y] = req.headers.range.replace("bytes=", "").split("-");
      let end = (opts.end = parseInt(y, 10) || stats.size - 1);
      let start = (opts.start = parseInt(x, 10) || 0);

      if (start >= stats.size || end >= stats.size) {
        res.setHeader("Content-Range", `bytes */${stats.size}`);
        res.statusCode = 416;
        return res.end();
      }

      headers["Content-Range"] = `bytes ${start}-${end}/${stats.size}`;
      headers["Content-Length"] = end - start + 1;
      headers["Accept-Ranges"] = "bytes";
    }

    res.writeHead(code, headers);

    if (read_or_buffer == "read")
      fs.createReadStream("index.html", opts).pipe(res);

    if (read_or_buffer == "buffer") {
      const content = fs.readFileSync("index.html");
      const stream = new Readable();

      stream.push(
        opts.start && opts.end
          ? content.slice(opts.start, opts.end + 1)
          : content
      );
      stream.push(null);

      stream.pipe(res);
    }
  };
};

http.createServer(handler("read")).listen(8080);

// TESTS

const options = { headers: { Range: "bytes=0-4" } };

http.get("http://127.0.0.1:8080/", options, response => {
  let data = "";
  response.on("data", chunk => (data += chunk));
  response.on("end", () => {
    console.log(data);
    process.exit();
  });
});

index.html

Hello world!

Answer 1

When the server receive a http range request starting from 0:

opts.start && opts.end

evaluates to false because opts.start is 0 so the code was sending the whole buffer and not the expected slice.

As NodeJS strictly meets the HTTP specification, it was not accepting the request.

---

The solution was to verify, when opts.start exists, if it is zero:

opts.start || opts.start === 0 && opts.end