Post request via Chai

Question

I am trying to make a request to my node JS server which accepts post/put call. The parameters I am trying to send with post call via chai is not visible on server (req.body.myparam).
I have tried with below post request but ended with not results:-

var host = "http://localhost:3000";
var path = "/myPath";
 chai.request(host).post(path).field('myparam' , 'test').end(function(error, response, body) {

and

chai.request(host).post(path).send({'myparam' : 'test'}).end(function(error, response, body) {

Node JS code is given below:-

app.put ('/mypath', function(req, res){                     //Handling post request to create league
    createDoc (req, res);
})


app.post ('/mypath', function(req, res){                        //Handling post request to create league
    createDoc (req, res);
})

var createDoc = function (req, res) {
    var myparam = req.body.myparam;                                 //league id to create new league
    if (!myparam) {
        res.status(400).json({error : 'myparam is missing'});
        return;
    }       
};

Above code goes to myparam is missing.

Please let me know what is the best way to do the same.
Thanks in Advance.

Answer 1

The way you have written, I assume that you used chai-http package. The .field() function does not work in chai-http. Another user pointed it out here and opened an issue on github.

Here is how you could have written:

.set('content-type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded')
.send({myparam: 'test'})

Here is the full code that successfully passes parameters to the server:

test.js

'use strict';
var chai = require('chai');
var chaiHttp = require('chai-http');

chai.use(chaiHttp);

describe('Test group', function() {
    var host = "http://" + process.env.IP + ':' + process.env.PORT;
    var path = "/myPath";

    it('should send parameters to : /path POST', function(done) {
        chai
            .request(host)
            .post(path)
            // .field('myparam' , 'test')
            .set('content-type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded')
            .send({myparam: 'test'})
            .end(function(error, response, body) {
                if (error) {
                    done(error);
                } else {
                    done();
                }
            });
    });
});

server.js

'use strict';
var bodyParser  = require("body-parser"),
    express     = require("express"),
    app         = express();

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

app.put ('/mypath', function(req, res){  //Handling post request to create league
    createDoc (req, res);
});

app.post ('/mypath', function(req, res){  //Handling post request to create league
    createDoc (req, res);
});

var createDoc = function (req, res) {
    console.log(req.body);
    var myparam = req.body.myparam; //league id to create new league
    if (!myparam) {
        res.status(400).json({error : 'myparam is missing'});
        return;
    }
};

app.listen(process.env.PORT, process.env.IP, function(){
    console.log("SERVER IS RUNNING");
});

module.exports = app;

Answer 2

I found two ways to solve the issue with empty req.body.

1. body as a form data

   .put('/path/endpoint')
   .type('form')
   .send({foo: 'bar'})
   // .field('foo' , 'bar')
   .end(function(err, res) {}
   
   // headers received, set by the plugin apparently
   'accept-encoding': 'gzip, deflate',
   'user-agent': 'node-superagent/2.3.0',
   'content-type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
   'content-length': '127',
   

2. body as application/json

   .put('/path/endpoint')
   .set('content-type', 'application/json')
   .send({foo: 'bar'})
   // .field('foo' , 'bar')
   .end(function(err, res) {}
   
   // headers received, set by the plugin apparently
   'accept-encoding': 'gzip, deflate',
   'user-agent': 'node-superagent/2.3.0',
   'content-type': 'application/json',
   'content-length': '105',
   

In both cases I use .send({foo: 'bar'}) and not .field('foo' , 'bar').

The issue apparently has nothing to do with chai-http. It is superagent's issue. And chai-http is using superagent under the hood.

superagent tries to play Machine Learning and make guesses for us. Here is what their docs say:

By default sending strings will set the Content-Type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded

SuperAgent formats are extensible, however by default "json" and "form" are supported. To send the data as application/x-www-form-urlencoded simply invoke .type() with "form", where the default is "json".

  request.post('/user')
    .type('form')
    .send({ name: 'tj' })
    .send({ pet: 'tobi' })
    .end(callback)

chai-http biggest fault is that they didn't document their plugin properly. You have to search for answers all over the Internet and not on chai-http GitHub page where it must be.