Fix HTTP requests with binary responses in the browser.

Set the response type for XHR requests to 'arraybuffer' to ensure
correct delivery of binary data when making HTTP requests in
the browser.

This required working around an issue with XMLHttpRequest.responseType
described in browserify/http-browserify#65

lib/base/streamutil.ts

@@ -1,13 +1,21 @@
 /// <reference path="../../typings/DefinitelyTyped/node/node.d.ts" />
 /// <reference path="../../typings/DefinitelyTyped/q/Q.d.ts" />
 
+import collectionutil = require('./collectionutil');
 import Q = require('q');
 
 export function readAll(readable: NodeJS.ReadableStream) : Q.Promise<string> {
 	var result = Q.defer<string>();
 	var body = '';
-	readable.on('data', (chunk: Buffer) => {
-		body += chunk.toString('binary');
+	readable.on('data', (chunk: any) => {
+		// in Node.js if the stream is from http.ClientResponse
+		// then chunk will be a Buffer. Under node-browserify it
+		// will be a Uint8Array if xhr.responseType was set to 'arraybuffer'
+		if (chunk instanceof Uint8Array) {
+			body += collectionutil.stringFromBuffer(chunk);
+		} else {
+			body += chunk.toString('binary');
+		}
 	});
 	readable.on('end', () => {
 		result.resolve(body);

lib/http_client.ts

@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
-/// <reference path="../typings/sprintf.d.ts" />
+/// <reference path="../typings/DefinitelyTyped/node/node.d.ts" />
 /// <reference path="../typings/DefinitelyTyped/q/Q.d.ts" />
+/// <reference path="../typings/sprintf.d.ts" />
 
 import http = require('http');
 import https = require('https');
@@ -8,6 +9,7 @@ import sprintf = require('sprintf');
 import urlLib = require('url');
 
 import asyncutil = require('./base/asyncutil');
+import env = require('./base/env');
 import err_util = require('./base/err_util');
 import streamutil = require('./base/streamutil');
 
@@ -110,7 +112,14 @@ export function request<T>(method: string, url: string, data?: T) : Q.Promise<Re
 		host: urlParts.hostname,
 		scheme: urlParts.protocol,
 		port: urlParts.port,
-		withCredentials: false
+		withCredentials: false,
+
+		// in the browser, where http.request is implemented by http-browserify,
+		// specify that the response type should be an ArrayBuffer.
+		//
+		// See comment about https://github.com/substack/http-browserify/issues/65
+		// below
+		responseType: 'arraybuffer'
 	};
 
 	// strip trailing colon from protocol.
@@ -141,6 +150,16 @@ export function request<T>(method: string, url: string, data?: T) : Q.Promise<Re
 			response.reject(err);
 		}).done();
 	});
+
+	if (env.isBrowser()) {
+		// work around http-browserify not setting failing to set
+		// xhr.responseType successfully due to Firefox not allowing
+		// xhr.responseType to be set until xhr.open() has been called.
+		// See https://github.com/substack/http-browserify/issues/65
+		var browserifyRequest: any = request;
+		browserifyRequest.xhr.responseType = 'arraybuffer';
+	}
+
 	if (data) {
 		switch (typeof data) {
 			case 'string':