Node.js Express express.json and express.urlencoded with form submit

Question

Express (or Connect's) bodyParser middleware is marked deprecated and users are advised to use instead:

app.use(connect.urlencoded()) app.use(connect.json())   

However, when I run the an example from Node.js in Action, I use curl to fill out the form as suggested by the book:

curl -F entry[title]='Ho ho ho' -F entry[body]='santa loves you' http://abc:[email protected]:3000/api/entry 

It doesn't work. req.body is not defined. Am I missing something? It works fine with bodyParser.

EDIT: SOLUTION as of Express 4

Parse json this way:

var bodyParser = require('body-parser');  ...  app.use(bodyParser.json()); 

Parse urlencoded body this way:

app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({extended: true})); 

Then there is no deprecation warning. The extended: true (default) uses the qs module and false uses the querystring module to parse the body.

Don't use app.use(bodyParser()), that usage is now deprecated.

Answer 1

bodyParser is in fact the composition of three middlewares (see documentation and relevant source code): json, urlencoded and multipart:

• json parses application/json request bodies
• urlencoded parses x-ww-form-urlencoded request bodies
• and multipart parses multipart/form-data request bodies, which is what you're interested in.

If you only specify json and urlencoded middlewares, the form data won't be parsed by any middleware, thus req.body won't be defined. You then need to add a middleware that is able to parse form data such as formidable, busboy or multiparty (as stated in connect's documentation).

Here is an example, using multiparty:

var multipart = require('connect-multiparty'); var multipartMiddleware = multipart(); app.use('/url/that/accepts/form-data', multipartMiddleware); app.post('/url/that/accepts/form-data', function(req, resp) {     console.log(req.body, req.files); }); 

Don't forget that by using such middlewares you allow anyone to upload files to your server: it then your responsibility to handle (and delete) those files.