Here is my simple form:
<form id="loginformA" action="userlogin" method="post">
<div>
<label for="email">Email: </label>
<input type="text" id="email" name="email"></input>
</div>
<input type="submit" value="Submit"></input>
</form>
Here is my Express.js/Node.js code:
app.post('/userlogin', function(sReq, sRes){
var email = sReq.query.email.;
}
I tried sReq.query.email or sReq.query['email'] or sReq.params['email'], etc. None of them work. They all return undefined.
When I change to a Get call, it works, so .. any idea?
Things have changed once again starting Express 4.16.0, you can now use express.json() and express.urlencoded() just like in Express 3.0.
This was different starting Express 4.0 to 4.15:
$ npm install --save body-parser
and then:
var bodyParser = require('body-parser')
app.use( bodyParser.json() ); // to support JSON-encoded bodies
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ // to support URL-encoded bodies
extended: true
}));
The rest is like in Express 3.0:
Firstly you need to add some middleware to parse the post data of the body.
Add one or both of the following lines of code:
app.use(express.json()); // to support JSON-encoded bodies
app.use(express.urlencoded()); // to support URL-encoded bodies
Then, in your handler, use the req.body object:
// assuming POST: name=foo&color=red <-- URL encoding
//
// or POST: {"name":"foo","color":"red"} <-- JSON encoding
app.post('/test-page', function(req, res) {
var name = req.body.name,
color = req.body.color;
// ...
});
Note that the use of express.bodyParser() is not recommended.
app.use(express.bodyParser());
...is equivalent to:
app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.urlencoded());
app.use(express.multipart());
Security concerns exist with express.multipart(), and so it is better to explicitly add support for the specific encoding type(s) you require. If you do need multipart encoding (to support uploading files for example) then you should read this.
Security concern using express.bodyParser()
While all the other answers currently recommend using the express.bodyParser() middleware, this is actually a wrapper around the express.json(), express.urlencoded(), and express.multipart() middlewares (http://expressjs.com/api.html#bodyParser). The parsing of form request bodies is done by the express.urlencoded() middleware and is all that you need to expose your form data on req.body object.
Due to a security concern with how express.multipart()/connect.multipart() creates temporary files for all uploaded files (and are not garbage collected), it is now recommended not to use the express.bodyParser() wrapper but instead use only the middlewares you need.
Note: connect.bodyParser() will soon be updated to only include urlencoded and json when Connect 3.0 is released (which Express extends).
So in short, instead of ...
app.use(express.bodyParser());
...you should use
app.use(express.urlencoded());
app.use(express.json()); // if needed
and if/when you need to handle multipart forms (file uploads), use a third party library or middleware such as multiparty, busboy, dicer, etc.
Note: this answer is for Express 2. See here for Express 3.
If you're using connect/express, you should use the bodyParser middleware: It's described in the Expressjs guide.
// example using express.js:
var express = require('express')
, app = express.createServer();
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.post('/', function(req, res){
var email = req.param('email', null); // second parameter is default
});
Here's the original connect-only version:
// example using just connect
var connect = require('connect');
var url = require('url');
var qs = require('qs');
var server = connect(
connect.bodyParser(),
connect.router(function(app) {
app.post('/userlogin', function(req, res) {
// the bodyParser puts the parsed request in req.body.
var parsedUrl = qs.parse(url.parse(req.url).query);
var email = parsedUrl.email || req.body.email;;
});
})
);
Both the querystring and body are parsed using Rails-style parameter handling (qs) rather than the low-level querystring library. In order to parse repeated parameters with qs, the parameter needs to have brackets: name[]=val1&name[]=val2. It also supports nested maps. In addition to parsing HTML form submissions, the bodyParser can parse JSON requests automatically.
Edit: I read up on express.js and modified my answer to be more natural to users of Express.
This will do it if you want to build the posted query without middleware:
app.post("/register/",function(req,res){
var bodyStr = '';
req.on("data",function(chunk){
bodyStr += chunk.toString();
});
req.on("end",function(){
res.send(bodyStr);
});
});
That will send this to the browser
email=emailval&password1=pass1val&password2=pass2val
It's probably better to use middleware though so you don't have to write this over and over in each route.
Note for Express 4 users:
If you try and put app.use(express.bodyParser()); into your app, you'll get the following error when you try to start your Express server:
Error: Most middleware (like bodyParser) is no longer bundled with Express and must be installed separately. Please see https://github.com/senchalabs/connect#middleware.
You'll have to install the package body-parser separately from npm, then use something like the following (example taken from the GitHub page):
var express = require('express');
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var app = express();
app.use(bodyParser());
app.use(function (req, res, next) {
console.log(req.body) // populated!
next();
})
Given some form:
<form action='/somepath' method='post'>
<input type='text' name='name'></input>
</form>
Using express
app.post('/somepath', function(req, res) {
console.log(JSON.stringify(req.body));
console.log('req.body.name', req.body['name']);
});
Output:
{"name":"x","description":"x"}
req.param.name x
Backend:
import express from 'express';
import bodyParser from 'body-parser';
const app = express();
app.use(bodyParser.json()); // add a middleware (so that express can parse request.body's json)
app.post('/api/courses', (request, response) => {
response.json(request.body);
});
Frontend:
fetch("/api/courses", {
method: 'POST',
body: JSON.stringify({ hi: 'hello' }), // convert Js object to a string
headers: new Headers({ "Content-Type": "application/json" }) // add headers
});
app.use(express.bodyParser());
Then for app.post request you can get post values via req.body.{post request variable}.
Update for Express 4.4.1
Middleware of the following is removed from Express.
bodyParser
json
urlencoded
multipart
When you use the middleware directly like you did in express 3.0. You will get the following error:
Error: Most middleware (like urlencoded) is no longer bundled with Express and
must be installed separately.
In order to utilize those middleware, now you need to do npm for each middleware separately.
Since bodyParser is marked as deprecated, so I recommend the following way using json, urlencode and multipart parser like formidable, connect-multiparty. (Multipart middleware is deprecated as well).
Also remember, just defining urlencode + json, the form data will not be parsed and req.body will be undefined. You need to define a middleware handle the multipart request.
var urlencode = require('urlencode');
var json = require('json-middleware');
var multipart = require('connect-multiparty');
var multipartMiddleware = multipart();
app.use(json);
app.use(urlencode);
app.use('/url/that/accepts/form-data', multipartMiddleware);
Update
As of Express version 4.16+, their own body-parser implementation is now included in the default Express package so there is no need for you to download another dependency.
You may have added a line to your code that looks like the following:
app.use(bodyparser.json()); //utilizes the body-parser package
If you are using Express 4.16+ you can now replace that line with:
app.use(express.json()); //Used to parse JSON bodies
This should not introduce any breaking changes into your applications since the code in express.json() is based on bodyparser.json().
If you also have the following code in your environment:
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({extended: true}));
You can replace that with:
app.use(express.urlencoded()); //Parse URL-encoded bodies
A final note of caution: There are still some very specific cases where body-parser might still be necessary but for the most part Express’ implementation of body-parser is all you will need for the majority of use cases.
(See the docs at expressjs/bodyparser for more details).
I was searching for this exact problem. I was following all the advice above but req.body was still returning an empty object {}. In my case, it was something just as simple as the html being incorrect.
In your form's html, make sure you use the 'name' attribute in your input tags, not just 'id'. Otherwise, nothing is parsed.
<input id='foo' type='text' value='1'/> // req = {}
<input id='foo' type='text' name='foo' value='1' /> // req = {foo:1}
My idiot mistake is your benefit.
For Express 4.1 and above
As most of the answers are using to Express, bodyParser, connect; where multipart is deprecated. There is a secure way to send post multipart objects easily.
Multer can be used as replacement for connect.multipart().
To install the package
$ npm install multer
Load it in your app:
var multer = require('multer');
And then, add it in the middleware stack along with the other form parsing middleware.
app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.urlencoded());
app.use(multer({ dest: './uploads/' }));
connect.json() handles application/json
connect.urlencoded() handles application/x-www-form-urlencoded
multer() handles multipart/form-data
You shoudn't use app.use(express.bodyParser()). BodyParser is a union of json + urlencoded + mulitpart. You shoudn't use this because multipart will be removed in connect 3.0.
To resolve that, you can do this:
app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.urlencoded());
It´s very important know that app.use(app.router) should be used after the json and urlencoded, otherwise it does not work!
Express v4.17.0
app.use(express.urlencoded( {extended: true} ))
app.post('/userlogin', (req, res) => {
console.log(req.body) // object
var email = req.body.email;
}
express.urlencoded
Demo Form
Another Answer Related
Written at Express version 4.16
Inside the router function you can use req.body property to access the post variable. For example if this was the POST route of your form, it would send back what you input:
function(req,res){
res.send(req.body);
//req.body.email would correspond with the HTML <input name="email"/>
}
P.S. for those who are familiar with PHP: In order to access PHP's $_GET variable we use req.query and to access PHP's $_POST variable we use req.body in Node.js.
Request streaming worked for me
req.on('end', function() {
var paramstring = postdata.split("&");
});
var postdata = "";
req.on('data', function(postdataChunk){
postdata += postdataChunk;
});
I could find all parameters by using following code for both POST and GET requests.
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
const util = require('util');
app.post('/', function (req, res) {
console.log("Got a POST request for the homepage");
res.send(util.inspect(req.query,false,null));
})
from official doc version 4
const express = require('express')
const app = express()
app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.urlencoded({ extended: true }))
app.post('/push/send', (request, response) => {
console.log(request.body)
})
var express = require("express");
var bodyParser = require("body-parser");
var app = express();
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.get('/',function(req,res){
res.sendfile("index.html");
});
app.post('/login',function(req,res){
var user_name=req.body.user;
var password=req.body.password;
console.log("User name = "+user_name+", password is "+password);
res.end("yes");
});
app.listen(3000,function(){
console.log("Started on PORT 3000");
})
Post Parameters can be retrieved as follows:
app.post('/api/v1/test',Testfunction);
http.createServer(app).listen(port, function(){
console.log("Express server listening on port " + port)
});
function Testfunction(request,response,next) {
console.log(request.param("val1"));
response.send('HI');
}
Use express-fileupload package:
var app = require('express')();
var http = require('http').Server(app);
const fileUpload = require('express-fileupload')
app.use(fileUpload());
app.post('/', function(req, res) {
var email = req.body.email;
res.send('<h1>Email :</h1> '+email);
});
http.listen(3000, function(){
console.log('Running Port:3000');
});
You are using req.query.post with wrong method req.query.post works with method=get, method=post works with body-parser.
Just try this by changing post to get :
<form id="loginformA" action="userlogin" method="get">
<div>
<label for="email">Email: </label>
<input type="text" id="email" name="email"></input>
</div>
<input type="submit" value="Submit"></input>
</form>
And in express code use 'app.get'
Other answers talk about the middleware to use on the server side. My answer attempt to provide developers with a simple playbook to debug the problem themselves.
In this question, the situation is:
You have a form on the client side
The data is sent by clicking on Submit button and you don't use JavaScript to send requests (so no fetch, axios, xhr,... but we can extend the solution for these cases later)
You use Express for the server side
You cannot access data in your Express code. req.body is undefined
There are some actions that you can do to find the solution by yourself:
Open the Network tab and search for your request.
Check the request header Content-Type. In this situation (form submit), the header is likely application/x-www-form-urlencoded or multipart/form-data if you send a file (with enctype="multipart/form-data" in the form tag)
Now check your Express code if you use the appropriate middleware to parse incoming requests.
If your Content-Type is application/x-www-form-urlencoded then you should have app.use(express.urlencoded({extended: true})) in your code.
If your Content-Type is multipart/form-data: because Express doesn't have a built-in middleware to parse this kind of request, you should another library for that. multer is a good one.
If you have done all the steps above, now you can access data in req.body :). If you have problems with the syntax, you should check the Express document page. The syntax could be changed because this question is posted a long time ago.
Now, we can extend this simple playbook for other cases that involve JavaScript code. The key is to check the request Content-Type. If you see application/json then you should use app.use(express.json()) in your code.
In summary, find your request Content-Type, then use the appropriate middleware to parse it.
when you are using POST method in HTML forms, you need to catch the data from req.body in the server side i.e. Node.js.
and also add
var bodyParser = require('body-parser')
app.use( bodyParser.json() );
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({extended: false}));
OR
use method='GET' in HTML and and catch the data by req.query in the server side i.e. Node.js
I'm trying to do a POST request using raw json.
In the Body tab I have "raw" selected with this body:
{
"name": "book"
}
On the Node js side I'm doing res.send(JSON.stringify(req.body))
router.post('/', (req, res, next) => {
res.send(JSON.stringify(req.body));
}
And in POSTMAN response I receive:
{"{\n\"name\": \"book\"\n}":""}
When expected something like
{"name":"book"}
Have no idea - where could be a reason for it?
You'll need to use the Express JSON body parser, install using
npm install body-parser;
Then:
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
app.use(bodyParser.json());
Once you do this, the JSON data will be parsed correctly and when you send it back it will render correctly.
Also make sure you have your Content-Type header set to "application/json" in your Postman request (go to "Headers" and add a new "Content-Type" header with value "application/json")
Here's a simple express app that will echo any JSON POST:
const express = require("express");
const port = 3000;
const app = express();
const bodyParser = require('body-parser')
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.post('/', (req, res, next) => {
console.log("Body: ", req.body);
res.send(JSON.stringify(req.body));
})
app.listen(port);
console.log(`Serving at http://localhost:${port}`);
If you're on Express v4.16.0 onwards, try to add this line before app.listen():
app.use(express.json());
This is a built-in middleware function in Express. It parses incoming requests with JSON payloads and is based on body-parser.
Looks to me like its not a fault of Postman, but your NodeJS service is applying JSON.stringify twice?
Can you log the response type from the server to console to check whether its already json content or not?
try with hard coded json response and then with dynamic variable
res.json({"name":"book"});
There are lots of posts about how to handle request with multipart form data . But my use case is that I have a client that expects multipart form data response from server, and I need to write a simple nodejs server in order to test my client.
To write the simple server, I have the following:
var express = require('express');
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var FormData = require('form-data');
var app = express();
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({extended: true}));
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.get('/describe', function(req, res) {
var form = new FormData();
form.append('part1', 'part 1 data');
form.append('part2', 'part 2 data');
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'multipart/form-data');
res.send(form);
});
app.listen(3030, "0.0.0.0");
console.log('Listening on port 3030...');
Now when my client request localhost:3030/describe, the response header shows the following without the boundary value
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; charset=utf-8
And the content is downloaded as file instead of in the response body.
{"_overheadLength":208,"_valueLength":22,"_valuesToMeasure":[],"writable":false,"readable":true,"dataSize":0,"maxDataSize":2097152,"pauseStreams":true,"_released":false,"_streams":["----------------------------315683163006570790405079\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=\"part1\"\r\n\r\n","part 1 data",null,"----------------------------315683163006570790405079\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=\"part2\"\r\n\r\n","part 2 data",null],"_currentStream":null,"_boundary":"--------------------------315683163006570790405079"}
So my questions:
1. how do we make the boundary appears in the response header?
2. how do we make the form data response content show up in the response body instead as download file?
To send your form data you'll want to pipe it (see documentation), like this:
form.pipe(res);
To add the boundary into the header, you can do something like this:
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'multipart/form-data; boundary='+form.getBoundary());
Now, about the "save as" box: The browser uses content-type to figure out what to do with the file. So if you want it to be displayed in the browser window, a good choice would be text/plain (or possibly text/html if that doesn't work). Then you could put your multipart/form-data into something like x-content-type.
(I'm assuming eventually you'll be using XHR or fetch, and at that point you can switch the content-type back. the text/plain thing is just a temporary solution to get the data to show up in a standard web browser for testing.)
Putting it all together:
app.get('/describe', function(req, res) {
var form = new FormData();
form.append('part1', 'part 1 data');
form.append('part2', 'part 2 data');
res.setHeader('x-Content-Type', 'multipart/form-data; boundary='+form._boundary);
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain');
form.pipe(res);
});
In my case, it was POST request that was being called by a webhook and I used multer did the magic too. Here is the code.
const express = require('express');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var multer = require('multer');
var upload = multer();
const app = express();
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
app.post('/', upload.none(), function (req, res) {
console.log("Data",req.body)
res.status(200).send('OK');
});
app.listen(port);
I am getting form data in this form
'------WebKitFormBoundarysw7YYuBGKjAewMhe\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name': '"a"\r\n\r\nb\r\n------WebKitFormBoundarysw7YYuBGKjAewMhe--\r\n
I'm trying to find a middleware that will allow me to access the form data like:
req.body.a // -> 'b'
I've tried
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
// parse application/x-www-form-urlencoded
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }))
Is there a problem with my implementation or am I not using the correct middleware?
The tool that worked was multiparty
app.post('/endpoint', function (req, res) {
var form = new multiparty.Form();
form.parse(req, function(err, fields, files) {
// fields fields fields
});
})
The library which worked for me was express-formidable. Clean, fast and supports multipart requests too.
Here is code from their docs
Install with:
npm install -S express-formidable
Here is sample usage:
const express = require('express');
const formidable = require('express-formidable');
var app = express();
app.use(formidable());
app.post('/upload', (req, res) => {
req.fields; // contains non-file fields
req.files; // contains files
});
The above two answers are correct but now those methods are outdated. multer is a better method to access form data. Install it by the following command: npm install multer
some useful body parsers.
Body-type: parser
form-data: multer
x-www-form-urlencoded: express.urlencoded()
raw: express.raw()
json: express.json()
text: express.text()
-better to use multer.
-But if you want to use bodyParser.urlencoded convert it into URLSearchParams data type
demonstration:-
let fd=new FormData("id_of_form")
let sp=new URLSearchParams()
for(let [k,v]:fd.entries()) sp.append(k,v)
make header 'Content-Type':'application/x-www-form-urlencoded ' and pass sp to body.
-happy coding
I am using Express 3, and would like to handle text/plain POSTs.
Express 3 uses connect's bodyParser now (I think the old Express code got moved to connect). The documentation for bodyParser gives some details about how to make it support additional file types. And I found an excellent blog post about how handling text/plain was done in old versions of Express).
Should I explicitly require connect (and let node's require cache the modified version)? Or is connect exposed via express somewhere?
connect.bodyParser does not have a 'parse' key.
How can I make Express (via connect) handle text/plain POSTs?
With bodyParser as dependency, add this to your app.js file.
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var app = express();
app.use(bodyParser.text());
Happy Noding.
https://gist.github.com/3750227
app.use(function(req, res, next){
if (req.is('text/*')) {
req.text = '';
req.setEncoding('utf8');
req.on('data', function(chunk){ req.text += chunk });
req.on('end', next);
} else {
next();
}
});
Will add the text as req.text
In express.js "^4.16..." the following code works fine for me:
// parse an HTML body as a string
app.use(bodyParser.text({ type: 'text/*' }))
The extended piece of the code is below:
// parse an HTML body as a string
app.use(bodyParser.text({ type: 'text/*' }))
// Enable CORS for ExpressJS
app.use((req, res, next) => {
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', '*')
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Methods', 'PUT, GET, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS')
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Credentials', true)
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Headers', 'Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept, Methods, Credentials')
next()
})
// Api url
app.post('/api/myApi', (req, res) => {
const bodyJson = JSON.parse(req.body)
// do something
}
I would just make a module similar to the json.js middleware module and just don't bother converting the buf data into anything else. Wrap it into a plain.js file, apply some decent "don't repeat yourself" refactoring, and submit a pull request to connect. Seems generally handy. However, note that while convenient, large enough request bodies will require streaming straight to disk at some point so you don't consume all the memory in your node server.
You may try this :
var expressApi= (req, res,params)=>{
console.log('req.body',params);
var body = '';
req.on('data', function (data) {
body += data;
});
req.on('end', function () {
res.write({status:200,message:'read data'});
});
}
You can parse every type to json via set type option
app.use(express.json({ type: ['text/*', '*/json'] }))