Express + Postman, req.body is empty

Question

I know this has been asked multiple times, but I have been looking around and still can't find an answer to my problem.

Here is my code, I make sure to use and configure body parser before defining the routes. I'm only using .json() with bodyParser because right now I'm only testing a POST function, but I've even tried with app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));

var express = require('express'),
    bodyParser = require('body-parser'),
    app = express();

app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.set('port', (process.env.PORT || 5000));

app.listen(app.get('port'), function() {
    console.log("Node app is running at localhost:" + app.get('port'))
});

app.post('/itemSearch', function(req, res) {
    //var Keywords = req.body.Keywords;
    console.log("Yoooooo");
    console.log(req.headers);
    console.log(req.body);
    res.status(200).send("yay");
});

Here is how I use Postman to test this route.

and here is the response I receive

Node app is running at localhost:5000
Yoooooo
{ host: 'localhost:5000',
  connection: 'keep-alive',
  'content-length': '146',
  'cache-control': 'no-cache',
  origin: 'chrome-extension://fhbjgbiflinjbdggehcddcbncdddomop',
  'content-type': 'multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundarynJtRFnukjOQDaHgU',
  'user-agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/45.0.2454.101 Safari/537.36',
  'postman-token': '984b101b-7780-5d6e-5a24-ad2c89b492fc',
  accept: '*/*',
  'accept-encoding': 'gzip, deflate',
  'accept-language': 'en-GB,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.6' }
{}

At this point I would really appreciate any help. Thanks.

Answer 1

After spending a few hours I realized need to change the Raw type in postman to JSON

Answer 2

I wanted to add an answer, as was seeming to have trouble getting sending as form-data to work, even if I was adding Content-Type: multipart/form-data to the Header (this was listed as correct header type in docs). I wonder if because using BodyParser in express, data has to come in as JSON raw. I swear I got form-data to work before, alas.

Here's how I was able to get req.body not to be empty:

1. Make sure in "Headers" tab, you have this key value pair setup:

Content-Type: application/json

Side note: interesting link to stack overflow article on all available header content type values.

2. In "Body" tab, make sure raw radio button is selected, and far right dropdown has JSON selected:

3. Now if I console log req.body in my express app, I see printed:

Answer 3

Try this

 // create application/json parser
    app.use(bodyParser.json());
    // parse various different custom JSON types as JSON
    app.use(bodyParser.json({ type: 'application/*+json' }));
    // parse some custom thing into a Buffer
    app.use(bodyParser.raw({ type: 'application/vnd.custom-type' }));
    // parse an HTML body into a string
    app.use(bodyParser.text({ type: 'text/html' }));
    // parse an text body into a string
    app.use(bodyParser.text({ type: 'text/plain' }));
    // create application/x-www-form-urlencoded parser
    app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }));

Answer 4

After spending 2 days and hours I realized that I need to change postman : Text to JSON

1. If you're using express 16.4 and up, make sure you have :

   const express = require("express");
   require("dotenv").config({ path: "./config/.env" });
   require("./config/db");
   const app = express();
   const userRoutes = require("./routes/user.routes");
   
   app.use(express.json()); //this is the build in express body-parser 
   app.use(                //this mean we don't need to use body-parser anymore
     express.urlencoded({
       extended: true,
     })
   );    
   //routes
   app.use("/api/user", userRoutes);
   
   // connect to the server
   app.listen(process.env.PORT, () => {
     console.log(`lestening port ${process.env.PORT}`);
   });
   

Answer 5

In my case, I solve it By Adding "type":"text" to urlencoded item int the exported collection json file generated by postman. I observe it because there are some of my request is successfully done. The difference is the missing type field in the json generated postman collection file. This problem also happen to my teammate.

before (failed request): "body": { "mode": "urlencoded", "urlencoded": [ { "key": "email", "value": "{{userEmail}}" }, { "key": "password", "value": "{{userPassword}}" } ] }

after (successful request): "body": { "mode": "urlencoded", "urlencoded": [ { "key": "email", "value": "{{userEmail}}", "type": "text" }, { "key": "password", "value": "{{userPassword}}", "type": "text" } ] }

I also write parser script in javascript language to handle it.

const fs = require('fs');
let object = require(process.argv[2]);

function parse(obj) {
    if(typeof obj === 'string') return;
    for(let key in obj) {
        if(obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
            if(key === 'urlencoded') {
                let body = obj[key];
                for(let i = 0;i < body.length;i++) {
                    body[i].type = "text";
                }
            }
            else parse(obj[key]);
        }
    }
}

parse(object);
fs.writeFile('ParsedCollection.json', JSON.stringify(object, null, '\t'), function(err){
    //console.log(err);
});

Just run it in terminal node parser.js <json postman collection file path> and it will output in ParsedCollection.json file. After that import this file into postman.

Answer 6

Since you are sending the request as form-data, use urlencoded() middleware from express or body-parser.

bodyParser = require('body-parser').urlencoded({ extended: true }); 
app.post('/itemSearch', bodyParser, function(req, res) {
  //var Keywords = req.body.Keywords;
  console.log("Yoooooo");
  console.log(req.headers);
  console.log(req.body);
  res.status(200).send("yay");
});

Answer 7

Hello You don't need body parser

const StringDecoder = require("string_decoder").StringDecoder;

 _server.post("/users", function (req, res) {
    const decoder = new StringDecoder();
    let buffer = "";
    req.on("data", function (data) {
      buffer += decoder.write(data);
    });
    req.on("end", function () {
      try {
        console.log(JSON.parse(buffer));
        res.json({ success: "ok });
      } catch (e) {
        console.log(e);
      }
    });
  });