Node.js Request memory leaking

Question

Given the following code snippet:

var request = require('request');
function getGoogle() {

  request('http://www.google.com', function (error, response, body) {
      if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
      //console.log(body) // Print the google web page.
      }
  });
}
setInterval(getGoogle, 1000);

Using Node version 0.10.17, this code leaks. Any ideas why?

the size of allocated mem just keeps growing... or what do you mean ? — Gergely Németh, Aug 25 '13 at 10:01
Because request() function is async, it will release the memory later when the anonymous function gets call. If the app run for a while and memory stays in some stable range. it doesn't mean there is a memory leak. — Jake Lin, Aug 25 '13 at 11:29

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 25 '13 at 10:08

I see a lot of questions where people go "aw my gawd memory leak!" based on the first few minutes of the app running, without waiting to see if the process hits a ceiling or actually runs out of memory. Node just uses as much memory as allowed to.

See the following rough benchmark. I ran your code (with a timeout of 100 instead), and the memory-usage rapidly increased to ~70 MB, but then stopped. The first column is memory usage.

27368  0:00.36 node test.js
40644  0:00.82 node test.js
47468  0:01.21 node test.js
48192  0:01.40 node test.js
67952  0:02.39 node test.js
69448  0:03.29 node test.js # Increasing fast til around here
70016  0:04.46 node test.js
70624  0:07.43 node test.js
70944  0:10.59 node test.js
71612  0:13.63 node test.js
73120  0:16.83 node test.js
70864  0:18.17 node test.js # Look it's decreasing
67780  0:42.27 node test.js # Considerably later it's even lower!

My guess at why it's like this would be because garbage collection is expensive, but I'm not sure and would be happy if anyone had a real explanation and references.

Sounds okay... i tried to force GC using global.gc(), this way the memory usage doesn't grow at all.. it seems, i just have to patient and wait for GC to happen. — Gergely Németh, Aug 25 '13 at 10:23

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 11 '13 at 16:27

1

In this page (http://www.joyent.com/blog/walmart-node-js-memory-leak) they actually found a memory leak in the http stack of Node.JS

The good news is that it is fixed in Node.JS version v0.10.22

answered Dec 11 '13 at 16:27

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Node.js Request memory leaking

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