Node (Express) request body empty

Question

I was working on a simple API using Node.JS and Restify tonight and had everything fine in terms of receiving parameters via req.params.fieldname. I installed CouchDB and Cradle in order to start trying to throw those parameters into a database, but after getting everything installed req.params started to come back empty!

I should have been using Express to begin with for other reasons, so I tried switching to that to see if I could get it working but no such luck.

var express = require('express');
var app = express.createServer();

app.configure(function(){
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.cookieParser());
});

app.post('/', function(req, res){
  res.send(req.body);
});

app.listen(8080, function() {
  console.log('Printomatic listening at', app.url);
});

I've tried countless variations but no matter what req.body comes back empty. I'm using http-console to test, and sending things as simple as POST / with content {"name":"foobar"}

I'm so frustrated that at this point I'm beginning to wonder if I broke something when installing Cradle/CouchDB (which were installed with NPM and Homebrew, respectively). Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is somewhat time-sensitive. Thanks for any help in advance!

Answer 1

You mention that you post JSON data ({"name": "foobar"}). Make sure that you send Content-Type: application/json with that, or bodyParser will not parse it.

E.g.:

$ curl -d 'user[name]=tj' http://local/ $ curl -d '{"user":{"name":"tj"}}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://local/ 

This is because bodyParser parses application/json, application/x-www-form-encoded and multipart/form-data, and it selects which parser to use based on the Content-Type.