It is simple to know the request URL path, it’s one (this.url in Koa) used by routing, but if you are looking to get the complete URL, it’s a little bit complicated. Luckily, there is a quick way to re-assemble the requested URL in Koa, if proxy is not a concern:

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var url = this.request.protocol + '://' + this.request.host + this.request.originalUrl;

Or a shorter version:

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var url = this.protocol + '://' + this.host + this.originalUrl;

The port number is included in this.host, for example: localhost:3000.

Putting into a complete script:

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require('koa')().use(function *() {
  // Echo back the request URL.
  this.body = this.protocol + '://' + this.host + this.originalUrl;
}).listen(3000);

Assume that you have a server running on the host www.example.com with SSL enabled. If you make a request to the server with the URL: https://www.example.com/path, this URL will be echoed back in the response by the above script.

In the example section of SuperTest (v0.15.0), it mentions something about ephemeral port:

You may pass an http.Server, or a Function to request() - if the server is not already listening for connections then it is bound to an ephemeral port for you so there is no need to keep track of ports. - https://github.com/visionmedia/supertest#example

Let’s dissect this sentence. There are a few key concepts to grasp:

1. The request function will accept either a function or an http.Server object.
2. When does the server not listening for connections?
3. What is an ephemeral port?

Taking a peek at the index.js file in SuperTest source code, it is easy to see that it accepts both function and http.Server object, but prefer latter:

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// See `index.js` in [SuperTest] source code.
if ('function' == typeof app) app = http.createServer(app);
// See `lib/test.js` in [SuperTest] source code.
Test.prototype.serverAddress = function (app, path) {
  var addr = app.address();
  if (!addr) this._server = app.listen(0);
  var port = app.address().port;
  var protocol = app instanceof htts.Server ? 'https' : 'http';
  return protocol + '://1270.0.0.1:' + port + path;
});

Why it does this? This has to do with Express:

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> typeof require('http').createServer()
'object'
> typeof require('express')()
'function'
> typeof require('koa')()
'object'
> require('http').createServer(require('express')()).address()
null

Only when initiating an Express app, it returns a function, not an object. And follows up on lib/test.js, when SuperTest detects the created server is yet to bind to any port number, it will invoke app.listen(0), so called ephemeral port. In fact, it is just a random port.

When something is ephemeral, it last for a very short time. When allowing a server to accept connections, we usually do is setting the server to listen on a specific port:

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app.listen(3001);

What if setting this to 0 like above or omit this port number?

This is a bare minimal HTTP server:

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require('http').createServer().listen(port);

If the port number is evaluated to be falsy, such as 0, null, undefined or an empty string, a random port will be assigned.

Begin accepting connections on the specified port and hostname. If the hostname is omitted, the server will accept connections on any IPv6 address (::) when IPv6 is available, or any IPv4 address (0.0.0.0) otherwise. A port value of zero will assign a random port. - https://iojs.org/api/http.html#http_server_listen_port_hostname_backlog_callback

We can use command line tool such as netstat to find out the port number:

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$ netstat -ltpn | grep node
tcp6     0    0 :::44055             :::*            LISTEN      5624/node

However, it will be very convenient without relying on external tools.

Luckily, we can find out the port number by using the address method:

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require('http').createServer().listen().address()

The result will be similar to:

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{ address: '::', family: 'IPv6', port: 44055 }

Furthermore, it works with all popular libraries that create an http.Server instance: