Post Request from NodeJS results in empty package - node.js

Question

I am trying to make a http post request towards an external API from my NodeJS application. I tried two different approaches I found on the web, however both failed with different issues. The working curl command that results in the correct request looks like this:
curl -d ' { "auth_token":"XXXXXXXXX",
"hrows": [ {"cols": [ {"value":"Name 0"}, {"value":"Value 0"} ] } ],
"rows": [ {"cols": [ {"value":"Name 1"}, {"value":"Value 1"} ] },
{"cols": [ {"value":"Name 2"}, {"value":"Value 2"} ] },
{"cols": [ {"value":"Name 3"}, {"value":"Value 3"} ] },
{"cols": [ {"value":"Name 4"}, {"value":"Value 4"} ] } ]
}' http://example.com:3030/widgets/alarms
1) Trying to make a request with the request library. This doesn't throw an error in the application, but I get an empty request on the API Server (Yes, the content I want to send is a string)
var request = require('request');
var test = "{\"auth_token\":\"XXXXXXXXXX\", \"hrows\": [ {\"cols\": [{\"value\":\"Loc Nr.\"},{\"value\":\"Address\"},{\"value\":\"Status\"}] } ], \"rows\": [ {\"cols\": [ {\"value\":\"Name 1\"}, {\"value\":\"Value 1\"} ] }, {\"cols\": [ {\"value\":\"Name 2\"}, {\"value\":\"Value 2\"} ] } ]}";
var wid = "alarms";
postRequest(wid,test);
function postRequest(widget, content) {
var headers = {
'User-Agent': 'Super Agent/0.0.1',
'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'Content-Length': Buffer.byteLength(content)
}
var options = {
traditional: true,
url: 'http://example.com:3030/widgets/'+widget,
method: 'POST',
headers: headers,
data: content,
contentType : "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
}
console.log(options);
request.post(options, function (error, response, body) {
if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
console.log(body)
}
})
}
When I do a tcpdump on the API server, I see that the packet received looks similar to the one received when executing the curl command, except for the field http.content_length_header being set to 0 (And the conrent itself is missing). When I check the debug output of the options variable, it sill looks ok:
{ traditional: true,
url: 'http://example.com:3030/widgets/alarms',
method: 'POST',
headers:
{ 'User-Agent': 'Super Agent/0.0.1',
'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'Content-Length': 243 },
data:
'{"auth_token":"XXXXXXXXX", "hrows": [ {"cols": [{"value":"Loc Nr."},{"value":"Address"},{"value":"Status"}] } ], "rows": [ {"cols": [ {"value":"Name 1"}, {"value":"Value 1"} ] },\t{"cols": [ {"value":"Name 2"}, {"value":"Value 2"} ] } ]}',
contentType: 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' }
As you can see content length as well as data are there but not in the packet received (See attached Screenshots, one from the curl command and one from the NodeJS request, both captured on the API server)
Any idea why this is happening?
2) The second way I tried was from a Stackoverflow Post I found on how to post a string. However that one fails with
Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:80
though I don't understand why it wants to bind to port 80 on my localhost, however method #1 would anyway be the preferred one, this is just for completeness (And maybe someone knows a smart answer to this as well
var querystring = require('querystring');
var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');
var test = "{\"auth_token\":\"XXXXXXXX\", \"hrows\": [ {\"cols\": [{\"value\":\"Loc Nr.\"},{\"value\":\"Address\"},{\"value\":\"Status\"}] } ], \"rows\": [ {\"cols\": [ {\"value\":\"Name 1\"}, {\"value\":\"Value 1\"} ] }, {\"cols\": [ {\"value\":\"Name 2\"}, {\"value\":\"Value 2\"} ] } ]}";
var wid = "alarms";
postRequest(wid,test);
function postRequest(widget, content) {
var headers = {
'User-Agent': 'Super Agent/0.0.1',
'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'Content-Length': Buffer.byteLength(content)
}
var options = {
url: 'http://example.com:3030/widgets/'+widget,
method: 'POST',
headers: headers,
}
var pdata = querystring.stringify(content);
console.log(pdata)
console.log(Object.prototype.toString.call(pdata));
var post_req = http.request(options, function() {
});
// post the data
post_req.write(pdata);
post_req.end();
}
Thanks for any useful hints (Or a hint how to trigger a dashing job using the dashing API but as far as I see that's not possible so I have to stick with these API calls :) )

Answer 1

It goes wrong in
var options = {
traditional: true,
url: 'http://example.com:3030/widgets/'+widget,
method: 'POST',
headers: headers,
data: content,
contentType : "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
}
data isn't a valid key on request options, it's either body or form. That would
explain why no body data is being sent in the request.
In your case you want form
form - when passed an object or a querystring, this sets body to a querystring representation of value, and adds Content-type:
application/x-www-form-urlencoded header. When passed no options, a
FormData instance is returned (and is piped to request). See "Forms"
section above.
var options = {
traditional: true,
url: 'http://example.com:3030/widgets/'+widget,
method: 'POST',
headers: headers,
form: content,
contentType : "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
}
see https://www.npmjs.com/package/request#requestoptions-callback for more details.