Get rawBody in express

Question

Hello I am trying to retrieve something from the post, and need the rawBody property from the incoming request. How can I retrieve it??

I tried using express.bodyParser() and in my post handler, I was looking for req.rawBody, and it was undefined.

I even tried it with connect.bodyParser(), but I still have no luck with it. I am getting undefined for rawBody.

I was reading on the stackoverflow site saying that they had removed the rawBody functionality, but mentioned that it is a quick fix to add it to our own middleware file. I am a newbie, so I do not have a clue as to how to achieve this. Below is my code snippet.

/**
 * Module dependencies.
 */

var express = require('express')
  , connect = require('connect')
  , routes = require('./routes')
  , user = require('./routes/user')
  , http = require('http')
  , path = require('path');

var app = express();

// all environments
app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 3000);
app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
app.set('view engine', 'jade');
app.use(express.favicon());
app.use(express.logger('dev'));
//app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(connect.bodyParser());
app.use(express.methodOverride());
app.use(app.router);
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));

// development only
if ('development' == app.get('env')) {
  app.use(express.errorHandler());
}

app.get('/', routes.index);
app.get('/users', user.list);



/**custom stuff**/

app.post('/upload',function(req, res){
        console.log(req.header('Content-Type'));
        console.log(req.header('Host'));
        console.log(req.header('User-Agent'));

        console.log(req.rawBody);
        console.log(req.body);
        res.send("<h1> Hello the response is "+req.body.username);
});

/** end**/

http.createServer(app).listen(app.get('port'), function(){
  console.log('Express server listening on port ' + app.get('port'));
});

Any help with this is much appreciated.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You can use your own middle ware to do this:

app.use(function(req, res, next){
   var data = "";
   req.on('data', function(chunk){ data += chunk})
   req.on('end', function(){
      req.rawBody = data;
      next();
   })
})

// Your route registration:
app.get('/', function(){// whatever...})

app.post('/test', function(req, res){
    console.log(req.rawBody);
    res.send("your request raw body is:"+req.rawBody);
})