How do I pass plain text as my request body using

Question

One of the controller methods in my NestJS application is supposed to take plain text as its body but whenever I try to make a request, the parameter is received as an empty object. Is this even possible or am I going to have to create some sort of DTO to pass that single string?

Example:

@Post()
  myFunction(@Body() id: string) {
    // do something here
  }

Answer 1

The semantics of a post request are determined by the header that indicates the content type. Try making sure the request header has the type 'text/plain' and see of this helps.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Methods/POST

Answer 2

I see that this question is pretty old, but it is listed in google among first, so I want to add answer here.

If you don't want to add body-parser middleware (for example, you want plain text only in single controller method), you can use raw-body (which is already exists in your node_modules), something like this:

import * as rawbody from 'raw-body';
import { Controller, Post, Body, Req } from '@nestjs/common';

@Controller('/')
export class IndexController {

  @Post()
  async index(@Body() data, @Req() req) {

    // we have to check req.readable because of raw-body issue #57
    // https://github.com/stream-utils/raw-body/issues/57
    if (req.readable) {
      // body is ignored by NestJS -> get raw body from request
      const raw = await rawbody(req);
      const text = raw.toString().trim();
      console.log('body:', text);

    } else {
      // body is parsed by NestJS
      console.log('data:', data);
    }

    // ...
  }

}

you could also create new parameter decorator

import * as rawbody from 'raw-body';
import { createParamDecorator, HttpException, HttpStatus } from '@nestjs/common';

export const PlainBody = createParamDecorator(async (data, req) => {
  if (req.readable) {
    return (await rawbody(req)).toString().trim();
  }
  throw new HttpException('Body aint text/plain', HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
});

and use it like

@Post()
async index(@PlainBody() text: string) {
  // ...

(I didn't check decorator code, wrote it right here in comment)

Answer 3

Nest is not compatible with plain/text and you must pass a bodyparser to your express app instead. Try something like this:

import * as bodyParser from 'body-parser';


async function bootstrap() {
  const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
  app.use(bodyparser({ ...options })) // for plain/text bodies
  await app.listen(3000)
}
bootstrap();

where options is created from https://www.npmjs.com/package/body-parser