# tomas/needle

Nimble, streamable HTTP client for Node.js. With proxy, iconv, cookie, deflate & multipart support.

Repository: https://github.com/tomas/needle
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/tomas-needle
Homepage: https://www.npmjs.com/package/needle
Language: JavaScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-07-01T01:25:48+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 63/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 90, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5379, "days_push": 64, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1634, forks 237 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:14.305387+00:00)

## What it is
Needle is a lean, streamable HTTP client library for Node.js with only two real dependencies. It supports callbacks, promises, and streams, along with proxy forwarding, multipart uploads, compression decoding, and automatic JSON/XML parsing.

## Use cases
- make simple HTTP requests in Node.js
- upload files via multipart form-data
- download data as a stream to a file
- call REST APIs and parse JSON responses automatically
- send requests through an HTTP proxy with authentication
- handle non-UTF-8 response charsets
- follow redirects with fine-grained control

## When to choose
- you want a lightweight HTTP client with minimal dependencies
- you need streaming uploads or downloads in Node.js
- you need proxy, multipart, or charset decoding support out of the box
- you prefer a simple API over heavier clients like axios or got

## When to avoid
- you need a browser or non-Node.js runtime client
- you want a modern fetch-based API with interceptors
- you need advanced features like retry policies or request cancellation beyond AbortSignal
- you are building a large app where a more feature-rich client ecosystem is preferable

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: http-client
- domain: web-development, apis, developer-tools
- platform: -
- tags: http-requests, multipart-upload, proxy-support, streaming, charset-decoding, redirect-following, gzip-deflate-brotli, nodejs

## Member repositories
- tomas/needle (main) score 63

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:14.305387+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:47:10.149674+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/tomas/needle (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:14.305387+00:00, sha f5ee2bcf4f8a)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/needle (fetched 2026-08-29T11:20:22.054223+00:00, sha 85267f6de0b2)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.