How to inspect FormData?

Question

Updated Method:

As of March 2016, recent versions of Chrome and Firefox now support using FormData.entries() to inspect FormData. Source.

// Create a test FormData object
var formData = new FormData();
formData.append('key1', 'value1');
formData.append('key2', 'value2');

// Display the key/value pairs
for (var pair of formData.entries()) {
    console.log(pair[0]+ ', ' + pair[1]); 
}

Thanks to Ghost Echo and rloth for pointing this out!

Old Answer:

After looking at these Mozilla articles, it looks like there is no way to get data out of a FormData object. You can only use them for building FormData to send via an AJAX request.

I also just found this question that states the same thing: FormData.append("key", "value") is not working.

One way around this would be to build up a regular dictionary and then convert it to FormData:

var myFormData = {
    key1: 300,
    key2: 'hello world'
};

var fd = new FormData();
for (var key in myFormData) {
    console.log(key, myFormData[key]);
    fd.append(key, myFormData[key]);
}

If you want to debug a plain FormData object, you could also send it in order to examine it in the network request console:

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest;
xhr.open('POST', '/', true);
xhr.send(fd);

Few short answers

[...fd] // shortest devtool solution
console.log(...fd) // shortest script solution
console.log([...fd]) // Think 2D array makes it more readable
console.table([...fd]) // could use console.table if you like that
console.log(Object.fromEntries(fd)) // Works if all fields are uniq
console.table(Object.fromEntries(fd)) // another representation in table form
new Response(fd).text().then(console.log) // To see the entire raw body

Longer answer

Others suggest logging each entry of fd.entries(), but the console.log can also take multiple arguments
console.log(foo, bar, ...)
To take any number of argument you could use the apply method and call it as such: console.log.apply(console, array).
But there is a new ES6 way to apply arguments with spread operator and iterator
console.log(...array).

Knowing this, And the fact that FormData and array's both has a Symbol.iterator method in it's prototype that specifies the default for...of loop, then you can just spread out the arguments with ...iterable without having to go and call formData.entries() method (since that is the default function) you can just do for (x of formData) if you prefer that

var fd = new FormData()

fd.append('key1', 'value1')
fd.append('key2', 'value2')
fd.append('key2', 'value3')

// using it's default for...of specified by Symbol.iterator
// Same as calling `fd.entries()`
for (let [key, value] of fd) {
  console.log(`${key}: ${value}`)
}

// also using it's default for...of specified by Symbol.iterator    
console.log(...fd)

// Don't work in IE (use last pair if same key is used more)
console.log(Object.fromEntries(fd))

If you would like to inspect what the raw body would look like then you could use the Response constructor (part of fetch API), this will convert your formdata to what it would actually look like when you upload the formdata

var fd = new FormData()

fd.append('key1', 'value1')
fd.append('key2', 'value2')

new Response(fd).text().then(console.log)

I use the formData.entries() method. I'm not sure about all browser support, but it works fine on Firefox.

Taken from https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FormData/entries

// Create a test FormData object
var formData = new FormData();
formData.append('key1','value1');
formData.append('key2','value2');

// Display the key/value pairs
for (var pair of formData.entries())
{
 console.log(pair[0]+ ', '+ pair[1]); 
}

There is also formData.get() and formData.getAll() with wider browser support, but they only bring up the Values and not the Key. See the link for more info.

ES6+ solutions:

To see the structure of form data:

console.log([...formData])

To see each key-value pair:

for (let [key, value] of formData.entries()) {
  console.log(`${key}: ${value}`);
}

Angular

var formData = new FormData();
formData.append('key1', 'value1');
formData.append('key2', 'value2');

formData.forEach((value,key) => {
  console.log(key+" "+value)
});

Not: When I am working on Angular 5 (with TypeScript 2.4.2), I tried as above and it works except a static checking error but also for(var pair of formData.entries()) is not working.

var formData = new FormData();
formData.append('key1', 'value1');
formData.append('key2', 'value2');

formData.forEach((value,key) => {
  console.log(key+" "+value)
});

Check at Stackblitz

Easy Method

I used this code in angular 8

var formData = new FormData();
formData.append('key1', 'value1');
formData.append('key2', 'value2');

 formData.forEach((value,key) => {
    console.log(key+value)
     });

In certain cases, the use of :

for(var pair of formData.entries(){... 

is impossible.

I've used this code in replacement :

var outputLog = {}, iterator = myFormData.entries(), end = false;
while(end == false) {
   var item = iterator.next();
   if(item.value!=undefined) {
       outputLog[item.value[0]] = item.value[1];
   } else if(item.done==true) {
       end = true;
   }
    }
console.log(outputLog);

It's not a very smart code, but it works...

Hope it's help.