web-services

Web Services in Godot 4.3+

Talk to REST APIs, leaderboards, analytics, login services, and other HTTP/WebSocket backends. All examples target Godot 4.3+ with no deprecated APIs. GDScript is shown first, then C#.

Related skills: multiplayer-basics for real-time game networking with WebSocketMultiplayerPeer, save-load for persisting tokens and cached responses, web-export for CORS and browser limits, mobile-development for Android export permissions, multithreading for heavy response parsing off the main thread.

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1. Picking the Tool

Need	Use	Why
Ordinary REST call, file or image download	HTTPRequest node	Handles connect, redirects, gzip, timeout; emits one signal when done
Streaming a response, custom keep-alive, many requests to one host	HTTPClient	Low-level; you call poll() and drive the state machine yourself
Persistent two-way channel (chat, live events, lobby service)	WebSocketPeer	Client socket; call poll() every frame
Real-time gameplay sync with RPCs	WebSocketMultiplayerPeer	Plugs into MultiplayerAPI — see multiplayer-basics

One HTTPRequest node runs one request at a time. A second request() while one is in flight returns ERR_BUSY. Create one node per concurrent request (Section 3) rather than queueing on a shared node.

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2. A Single Request with await

request() only starts the request; its return value says whether it could be sent, not whether the server answered. The result arrives on request_completed(result, response_code, headers, body).

func fetch_motd() -> void:
    var http := HTTPRequest.new()
    http.timeout = 10.0 # Default 0.0 means wait forever.
    add_child(http)

    var err := http.request("https://api.example.com/v1/motd")
    if err != OK:
        push_error("Could not start request: %s" % error_string(err))
        http.queue_free()
        return

    var res: Array = await http.request_completed
    http.queue_free()

    var result: int = res[0]
    var code: int = res[1]
    var body: PackedByteArray = res[3]
    if result != HTTPRequest.RESULT_SUCCESS:
        push_warning("Network failure (HTTPRequest.Result %d)" % result)
    elif code != 200:
        push_warning("Server answered HTTP %d" % code)
    else:
        print(body.get_string_from_utf8())