I am learning node and express and I noticed some tutorials like to send a response that looks like this:
{status: “Success”, message: “custom message”, response: {actual response object}}
My question is, what is the point of adding the extra status and message fields? Why not just return the response object by itself?
The simple reason is convenience. It sends a clear message to the client about the status of the request and what message to display based on that status. Its just a good programming practice that helps to structure your code base on how to handle errors from requests in the client side.
Related
I am submitting a form and if the form id already exists in the database, I am returning status 400 with a message saying that the form exists.
res.status(400).send({
status: 400,
message: "Form exists"
})
When I read the response sent back from my express server, I am getting Bad request message instead of the custom message object that I am returning. If I replace res.status(400) with res.status(200), I am getting the expected custom message object.
Weird enough, I can get the custom message object when making the server call in development environment. I get Bad Request message from my production server and I don't know why the response is different when the environment is different. I am hosting this server on IIS Manager v10
So my question is should I use status code of 200 instead of 400 in this scenario? Is there a way to return a custom message from status 400? Based on my understanding, I should use 4xx status code if there is a client input errors eg there is already an existing ID or invalid inputs.
Edit: This is my code from my React app.
axiosInstance
.post("/form/some-endpoint", formData)
.then(function () {
navigate(ROUTE_SUCCESS_PAGE);
})
.catch(function (error) {
// eslint-disable-next-line no-console
console.log(error);
alert(error.response !== undefined ? error.response.data.message : error.message);
});
This is the actual screenshot of the response from prod server (I console log it)
But in development environment, I am getting the response that I wanted.
Postman response from Prod server:
<system.webServer>
<httpErrors existingResponse="PassThrough" />
</system.webServer>
Adding the <httpErrors existingResponse="PassThrough" /> to the server's web.config file on IIS Manager resolved my issue. Based on my understanding, bypassing the http error handler and not letting IIS to send its response is the solution that I need.
should I use status code of 200 instead of 400 in this scenario
TLDR: It depends on the usage.
If your intent is to Update a form, like using a PUT request, you should require an id and if that id does not exist, return 404.
If you are looking to Create a new form, like using a POST request, with an id or other meta data and one already exists matching the id or meta data (e.g. groupId), then 400 is fine but it could be better to use 409 stating that there is a conflict with the existing state, that being a preexisting form id or meta data. Though you don't often pass an id to a POST create request.
The full list of codes is a great place to start, but sometimes it helps to see how certain codes are used in production APIs. A good place to look is the GitHub API which shows the possible status codes for each endpoint along with a description. Take the Pulls API for example, just searching for 40 on the page gives you a lot of insight about when certain codes are used.
Comparing these statuses with your example, if you look at the PUT /repos/{owner}/{repo}/pulls/{pull_number}/merge route, they use 409 whenever the state is not matching as they describe...
Conflict if sha was provided and pull request head did not match
This seems similar in nature to the POST request described above.
At the end of the day the crucial part is to get in the correct grouping (i.e 2xx, 4xx, etc.) after that it's more about being consistent across your API than matching the codes to exact best option. Also everyone is different and some may choose different codes for the same use case.
As far as changing the response itself on 400 status, you should be able to achieve this by setting statusMessage directly and then call res.end.
function(req, res) {
res.statusMessage = "Form exists";
res.status(400).end();
}
Also see https://stackoverflow.com/a/36507614/6943587
Currently building a RESTful API with express on my web server, and some routes like the delete route for a document with mongoose ex. await Note.findByIdAndRemove(request.params.id) response.status(204).end() send response statuses with end()
Why do I need to add the .end()? What in these cases, and why cant one just send response.status(204)
With some responses that return json, the response.status(201).json works fine
Only certain methods with Express or the http interface will send the response. Some methods such as .status() or .append() or .cookie() only set state on the outgoing response that will be used when the response is actually sent - they don't actually send the response itself. So, when using those methods, you have to follow them with some method that actually sends the response such as .end().
In your specific example of:
response.status(204)
You can use the Express version that actually sends the response:
response.sendStatus(204)
If you choose to use .status() instead, then from the Express documentation, you have to follow it with some other method that causes the response to be sent. Here are examples from the Express documentation for .status():
res.status(403).end()
res.status(400).send('Bad Request')
res.status(404).sendFile('/absolute/path/to/404.png')
Since all three of these other methods will cause the response to be sent and when the response goes out, it will pick up the previously set status.
I am creating an web app I which the user requests to create an account. The request from client's page will reach the server and query the database. Now what is the proper way of displaying User already exists error in my registeration page. In short, how can I send server side errors to my clients in Node JS?
There are some options to get what you need. The approach that I would not follow will be using the http protocol and sending a 500 response for example.
One good approach would be creating a status and a message fields in your response.
You could use code 200 for the sucessful requests and a different code for the rest. You could have a dedicated code to inform the api user that the backend coud not insert the data.
Example response:
{
code: 789
message: "User could not be inserted"
...
}
I'm trying to validate a webhook via facebook. So facebook hits my url my-url/facebook/receive within my route in nodejs i'd do res.send(req.query['hub.challenge']); to send an http response.
I'm using KoaJS. From what i understand, Koajs merges the request and response object into ctx but when reading through the docs I can't find anything along the lines of ctx.send or similar to send a http response.
Can anyone give me some direction or links.
Thanks.
To send the body of a response, you can simply do ctx.response.body = 'Hello'. There are many aliases attached to ctx, so you don't necessarily have to reference the response or request yourself. Doing ctx.body = 'Hello' would be the same as the code above.
If you wanted to set headers, you would use the ctx.set() method. For example: ctx.set('Content-Type', 'text/plain').
To access the query parameters, you would use ctx.request.query['some-key'] (or simply the alias ctx.query['some-key']).
All of the different request/response methods are documented pretty well at the Koa website along with a list of aliases attached to ctx. I highly recommend you give it a read.
i' m a bit new to Node, so question may be stupid...
I am sending a POST request to a website (through http.request) and I want to be able to use the invisible POST data I get along the response.
I hope this is achievable, and I think so since I am able to preview those data in Chrome debugger.
PS : I understand that we can use BodyParser to parse and get those while listening for a POST call server side, but I have found no example of how to use it coupled with an http.request.
Thanks !
If the body of the HTTP response contains JSON, then you need to parse it first in order to turn it from a string into a JavaScript object, like this:
var obj = JSON.parse(body);
console.log(obj.response.auth_token);
More info on various ways of sending a POST request to a server can be found here: How to make an HTTP POST request in node.js?
Edit : So we figured it out in the comments. The value I needed was in the form to begin with, as a hidden field. My error was to think it was generated afterward. So I'll just grab it first then login, so I can use it again for future POST requests on the website.