Node.js - Array is converted to object when sent i

Question

The following Node.js code:

var request = require('request');

var getLibs = function() {
    var options = { packages: ['example1', 'example2', 'example3'], os: 'linux', pack_type: 'npm' }

    request({url:'http://localhost:3000/package', qs:options}, 
    function (error , response, body) {
        if (! error && response.statusCode == 200) {
            console.log(body);
        } else if (error) {
            console.log(error);
        } else{
            console.log(response.statusCode);
        }
    });
}();

sends the following http GET request query that is received by like this:

{"packages"=>{"0"=>"example1", "1"=>"example2", "2"=>"example3"}, "os"=>"linux", "pack_type"=>"npm"}

How can I optimize this request to be received like this:

{"packages"=>["example1", "example2", "example3"], "os"=>"linux", "pack_type"=>"npm"}

Note. The REST API is built in Ruby on Rails

Answer 1

If the array need to be received as it is, you can set useQuerystring as true:

UPDATE: list key in the following code example has been changed to 'list[]', so that OP's ruby backend can successfully parse the array.

Here is example code:

const request = require('request');

let data = {
  'name': 'John',
  'list[]': ['XXX', 'YYY', 'ZZZ']
};

request({
  url: 'https://requestb.in/1fg1v0i1',
  qs: data,
  useQuerystring: true
}, function(err, res, body) {
  // ...
});

In this way, when the HTTP GET request is sent, the query parameters would be:

?name=John&list[]=XXX&list[]=YYY&list[]=ZZZ

and the list field would be parsed as ['XXX', 'YYY', 'ZZZ']

---

Without useQuerystring (default value as false), the query parameters would be:

?name=John&list[][0]=XXX&list[][1]=YYY&list[][2]=ZZZ

Answer 2

I finally found a fix. I used 'qs' to stringify 'options' with {arrayFormat : 'brackets'} and then concatinated to url ended with '?' as follows:

var request = require('request');
var qs1 = require('qs');

var getLibs = function() {
    var options = qs1.stringify({ 
        packages: ['example1', 'example2', 'example3'], 
        os: 'linux', 
        pack_type: 'npm' 
        },{
        arrayFormat : 'brackets'
    });


    request({url:'http://localhost:3000/package?' + options}, 
    function (error , response, body) {
        if (! error && response.statusCode == 200) {
            console.log(body);
        } else if (error) {
            console.log(error);
        } else{
            console.log(response.statusCode);
        }
    });
}();

Note: I tried to avoid concatenation to url, but all responses had code 400