How to query a request at Nodejs Proxy Server? - node.js

Question

I have a Nodejs Proxy server like this:
`var http = require('http'),
httpProxy = require('http-proxy');
var proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer({});
proxy.on('proxyReq', function(proxyReq, req, res, options) {
proxyReq.setHeader('X-Special-Proxy-Header', 'foobar');
});
var server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {
console.log(req.body);
proxy.web(req, res, {
target: 'http://localhost:3000'
});
});
console.log("listening on port 9000")
server.listen(9000);`
What i want is get the req.body at the proxy server when i post a request to the Origin server, go through the proxy server.
I used "console.log(req.body);" at both proxy server and the origin server. I get the body object {"id": "user003"} at origin server, but undefined at the proxy server.
So how can i get the req.body at proxy server?

Answer 1

I suspect the problem here is that you don't have a body parser on your proxy server, but do have one on your origin.
req.body itself isn't set by node. Instead, you have to handle events emitted by the req stream:
let body = '';
req.on('data', (data) => {
// data is a buffer so need toString()
body += data.toString();
});
req.on('end', () => {
// at this point you'll have the full body
console.log(body);
});
You can make this easier with a body parser (e.g https://www.npmjs.com/package/body-parser) but since you're running a proxy server, you probably don't want to parse the entire req stream before forwarding onto your origin. So I'd maybe stick with handling the events.