javascript delete keyword not working properly

Question

This is really weird I think, I have this json being sent through http.

{
   "foo":"bar",
   "foo2":"bar2",
   "name":{
       "firstName":"Joff",
       "middleName":"Ramirez",
       "lastName":"Tiquez"
   }
}

On the server I was performing these commands:

var data = req.body; // the json from http
console.log('data', data); // the data now has the req.body's value 
delete data.name; // <-- here's the delete
console.log('data', data); // the name object will obviously be deleted
console.log('req.body', req.body); // the name on the req.body was deleted too. Wtf?

So when I tried to use the req.body.name on the other parts of my program, the name is now gone. Is that how delete is supposed to work?

Answer 1

var data = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(req.body));
delete data.name; // <-- here's the delete

Now when you do a

console.log('req.body', req.body); // This won't be deleted. 

As pointed out by @Dellirium, Objects are passed by reference, reqBody is the same object as the data