How do I make req.body.password not equal to undefined? - node.js

Question

In my html I have,
<input name="password" type="password" required class="form-control" id="exampleInputPassword1">
and in my node I have,
const express = require('express');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
const app = express();
const urlencodedParser = bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false })
app.get('/login.html', (req, res) => {
res.sendFile('./login.html', {root: __dirname});
})
app.post('/login', urlencodedParser, (req,res)=>{
req.body.password
})
but, the req.body.password is undefined or empty. How do I make it actually grab what the user is inputting? It does not work for any of them but, I just used password as an example. All the packages were downloaded correctly.
Thanks.

Answer 1

I used the following code:
const express = require("express");
const bcrypt = require("bcrypt");
const bodyParser = require("body-parser");
const app = express();
const jsonParser = express.json();
const urlencodedParser = bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false });
// CHANGE THIS TO DATABASE LATER OF USERS
const users = [];
//listen for requests
app.listen(3000);
app.use(express.static(__dirname + "/public"));
app.get("/index.html", (req, res) => {
res.sendFile("./index.html", { root: __dirname });
});
app.get("/login.html", (req, res) => {
res.sendFile("./login.html", { root: __dirname });
});
app.post("/login", jsonParser, (req, res) => {
console.log("Hello");
console.log(req.body.password);
res.json(req.body.password);
});
app.get("/signup.html", (req, res) => {
res.sendFile("./signup.html", { root: __dirname });
});
app.post("/signup", urlencodedParser, (req, res) => {});
app.use((req, res) => {
res.sendFile("./404.html", { root: __dirname });
});
And when I send a POST request to the /login path using the following payload:
{
"password": "Check for Stack Overflow"
}
I get this on the console:
$ node app
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, stat '/root/404.html'
Hello
Check for Stack Overflow
I use the following end point: http://2886795314-3000-ollie08.environments.katacoda.com/
And I used POSTMan and got this right now:
Previous Answer...
You have to use res object to send something. For example, to send a JSON structure, you can do:
res.json(req.body.password)
So your code will be:
const express = require("express");
const bodyParser = require("body-parser");
const app = express();
const urlencodedParser = bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false });
app.get("/login.html", (req, res) => {
res.sendFile("./login.html", { root: __dirname });
});
app.post("/login", urlencodedParser, (req, res) => {
res.json(req.body.password);
});
Also I could see that you are not using a .listen or export of your modules. You may as well need to listen it to a port to run! So use:
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log("Server started in port 3000!");
});
At the end. So your complete file looks like:
const express = require("express");
const bodyParser = require("body-parser");
const app = express();
const urlencodedParser = bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false });
app.get("/login.html", (req, res) => {
res.sendFile("./login.html", { root: __dirname });
});
app.post("/login", urlencodedParser, (req, res) => {
res.json(req.body.password);
});
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log("Server started in port 3000!");
});
Also, please consider reading Express "Hello World" example. It has the best example in the easiest way possible from the original documentation.

Answer 2

req.body.password is kind of like a variable. It 'returns' it's value, but you're not doing anything with what it returns.
It's not clear what you mean with return. If you want to log something to a console, you can do that:
console.log(req.body.password);