How to get POST fields in Express, without using bodyParser middleware?
express, javascript, middleware, node.js
Solution
The issue is that, when sending `FormData`, the `Content-Type` will be `multipart/form-data`.
Though you're using `express.json()` and `express.urlencoded()`, each of them only acts on particular `Content-Type`s -- `application/json` and `application/x-www-form-urlencoded`, respectively.
And Express/Connect will be removing built-in support for `multipart()` and parsing of `multipart/form-data` content in the future due to security concerns. They instead recommend using:
- formidable
- connect-multiparty or multiparty
- connect-busboy or busboy
So, for future support of `FormData` and `multi-part` in general with Express/Connect, you'll have to use an addition dependency.
Problem
With recent versions of Express, the recommendation (conveyed through a debug message) is to stop using the `bodyParser` middleware. I read a bit, and it looks like bodyParser is a wrapper to the `json` and `urlencoded` middlewares - and lo and behold, the most recent version of Express (3.4.4) uses these 2 instead of the `bodyParser` out of the box - splendid, right? But now, I can't get to my fields. `req.body` is undefined. Here's my JS form submission code (text fields only, no files). Could someone please tell me which property/function of `req` do I use to get at the values? ``` var formData = new FormData($('#myForm')[0]); $.ajax({ url: '/myurl', cache: false, contentType: false, processData: false, data: formData, type: 'POST', success: function(data) { console.log(data); }, error: function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) { console.error('Error occured: ' + errorThrown); } }); ```