nodejs request - streaming a response file

In my nodejs app, I am trying to read a http file url, and then download the contents of that file in a streaming manner.

What I want to do is: - make to request to the file resource (using node request module) - when response starts to become available, then start reading the data in chunks, rather than have the file downloaded to disk..

I understand that the request module does support streaming, and I have verified that the below code works:

var request = require('request');

var fileUrl = "http://172.19.2.48:8080/files/1472628282006/valid.txt";

request(fileUrl, function(err, response, body) {})
.on('response', function(response) {

  /*
  response.on('readable', function() {
    console.log("now readable");
    var ch;
    while ((ch=response.read(1))!== null) {
      console.log("char:", ch);
    }
  });
  */

  response.on('data', function(data) {
    console.log('data: ', data.toString());
  });

});

But only problem is, I don't have control on "reading how much I want to read", since the 'data' event gives whatever available at that point of time. Instead what I wanted to do was something like using a read operation myself, as in the commented code in the above snippet.

Such code generally works for nodeJS steams 2, but I cannot get it working here. The readable event is fired, but the read operation returns null. My use case is, I am going to read some sort of structured data, and I am gonna parse it by reading a char at a time using some finite state machine.

So, is there any to read, rather than be notified by a 'data' event?

output, when trying to read. Only readable event is received, subsequent reads return null.

rvnath@admin ~/downloader $ node download.js
now readable

Edit In a nutshell, I want to be able to use the incoming response steam in a streams2 (pull based stream) manner, rather than streams 1(push based) type.

The problem is, the stream is in flowing mode so all data is read automatically. Maybe you can try this:

request(fileUrl, function(err, response, body) {})
.on('response', function(response) {
  response.pause(); // <-- Pauses stream so you can pull data on demand
  response.on('readable', function() {
    console.log("now readable");
    var ch;
    while ((ch=response.read(1))!== null) {
      console.log("char:", ch);
    }
  });
});