node.jsnode-fetch

cURL giving the correct resonse but nodejs fetch redirecting to access denied


I want to download a json file from a website. Using the chrome dev tool, when I am copying the cURL command of the file downloading url, it is giving me the required json response. But when copying the fetch (nodejs) command, and running through "node-fetch" module, it is redirecting me to the access-denied page.

Using Fetch(copied exactly from that website) through async/await

(async ()=>{
    try
{
  var res=await fetch("url/getjson?file", {
    "headers": {
      "accept": "application/json, text/plain, */*",
      "accept-language": "en-GB,en-US;q=0.9,en;q=0.8",
      "content-type": "application/json",
      "sec-fetch-dest": "empty",
      "sec-fetch-mode": "cors",
      "sec-fetch-site": "same-origin",
      "sec-gpc": "1",
      "cookie": "cooookiiieee=correctcookie; AuthToken=gibberishh; UserName=blahblah; EntityRefId=pleasehelp"
      
    },
    "referrer": "referrerurl",
    "referrerPolicy": "strict-origin-when-cross-origin",
    "body": null,
    "method": "GET",
    "mode": "cors"
  });
  const content = await res.json();
  console.log(content);
}
catch(err){
console.log(err)
}
})();


Fetch Response

FetchError: invalid json response body at url/error/accessdenied reason: Unexpected token < in JSON at position 1
    at /home/user/Documents/node_modules/node-fetch/lib/index.js:272:32
    at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:93:5)
    at async /home/user/Documents/test/app.js:25:19 {
  type: 'invalid-json'
}

whereas the response with cURL command was the correct json file as it is not redirecting me.

Curl Command

curl 'url/getjson?file'   
-H 'Connection: keep-alive'   
-H 'Accept: application/json, text/plain, */*'   
-H 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/87.0.4280.101 Safari/537.36'   
-H 'Content-Type: application/json'   
-H 'Sec-GPC: 1'   -H 'Sec-Fetch-Site: same-origin'   
-H 'Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors'   -H 'Sec-Fetch-Dest: empty'   
-H 'Referer: referrerurl'   
-H 'Accept-Language: en-GB,en-US;q=0.9,en;q=0.8'   
-H 'Cookie: 
cooookiiieee=correctcookie; AuthToken=gibberishh; UserName=blahblah; EntityRefId=pleasehelp'   
--compressed

Solution

  • The correct response was received after I added User-Agent in the headers as it was considering the default node agent as bot. It must be added before cookie i.e before sending AuthToken.