Use NodeJS to upload file in an API call

Question

I'm looking at using NodeJS to act as the server to build an API.

Ideally I'd love for there to be an API endpoint to send a set of information as well as a file which can be saved to the files system.

Most examples I've seen are for sending a file via a form, however I'd like to do this through a post request.

Does anyone know how I could achieve this (if it's at all possible)?

At the moment what I'd like to achieve is something along the following lines:

app.post('/Some/Endpoint/', controller.handleSomeEndpoint, function(request, response) {
    response.send('Finished Request');
});

exports.handleSomeEndpoint = function(request, response, next) {
    var bodyarr = []
    request.on('data', function(chunk){
      bodyarr.push(chunk);
    })
    request.on('end', function(){
      console.log( bodyarr.join('') );
    })
}

But the data and end never get called if I run a curl command along the lines of:

curl http://127.0.0.1:5000/Some/Endpoint/ -F 'test=@test_file'

Cheers, Matt

Answer 1

The answer seems to be that expressJS doesn't use the same method of handling a post file as the http module in nodejs.

All that was needed was including a directory for the files to be written to:

app.use(express.bodyParser({uploadDir:'./uploads'}));

Which I found here:

http://www.hacksparrow.com/handle-file-uploads-in-express-node-js.html

Answer 2

I would suggest you to use Formidable to avoid anonymous file uploading.