Req.body is undefined inside router in express - node.js

Question

I have a small express app, which consists of the server, some views and a router. Here's my server.js:
const express = require('express');
const helmet = require('helmet');
const app = express();
app.use(helmet.contentSecurityPolicy({ directives: { defaultSrc: ["'self'"], scriptSrc: ["'self'", 'maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com', 'ajax.googleapis.com'], styleSrc: ["'self'", 'maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com'], imgSrc: ["'self'", 'image.tmdb.org'] } }));
const path = require('path');
const bp = require('body-parser');
const routes = require('./routes/index');
app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
app.set(express.json());
app.set(bp.urlencoded({extended: false}));
app.set(bp.json())
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
app.use('/', routes);
app.listen(3000, () => {
console.log('Servidor online');
})
Here's my router.js:
const express = require('express');
const request = require('request');
const router = express.Router();
router.post('/search', (req, res, next) => {
console.log(req.body);
res.send('sanity check');
});
module.exports = router;
And here's the view (it's a form inside a navbar):
<nav class="navbar navbar-default">
<div class="container-fluid">
<div class="navbar-header">
<a class="navbar-brand" href="/">The New IMDB</a>
</div>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
<li>Login</li>
<li>Favorites</li>
</ul>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
<li>
<form action="/search?source=hp" method="POST" id="search-form" class="form-inline">
<div class="form-group">
<select name="categ" class="form-control" id="cat">
<option value="movie">Movie Title</option>
<option value="person">Actor</option>
</select>
</div>
<input type="text" id="movie" placeholder="Search" name="movieSearchq" />
<input type="submit" class="btn btn-primary" />
</form>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</nav>
I've searched previous questions and found out that bodyParser was not being shipped with express anymore, so i've installed it, but it still does not create the body object inside the req. Am i missing something here?

Answer 1

You've incorrectly setup the body-parser to parse form-data since you're using app.set (use this only to set apply express settings).
Instead you need to setup middlewares using app.use:
app.use(bp.urlencoded({extended: false}));
app.use(bp.json());