Malformed json in request body - json

In our react application, we are posting json string entered in a text area, to an express router function. In the client we are using axios to post the data to express router.
We do receive the data in the express router function like :
const reqData = request.body
But when we inspect the data which is received in the router function, the json we are passing is wrapped with another curly braces:
{{"user":"emp","comapany":"acme"}}
The outer braces are added automatically it seems and because of this, JSON.parse is failing.
Is there a way to avoid this?

I believe the issue is that you're using a reference to the entire req.body, when you usually want to pull off specific properties.
When posting from the client, use a named key:
axios.post(`url`, {
namedKey: { // -> call it something suitable to your scenario
user: 'emp',
company: 'acme'
}
})
In your express router, desctructure from the same name:
const { namedKey } = request.body
This could also be solved by pulling off the properties one-by-one:
client:
axios.post('url', {
user: 'emp', // user key
company: 'acme' // company key
})
express router:
const { user, company } = req.body
It really depends how you want to organize it.

Related

Nextjs/Vercel error: only absolute URLs are supported. Where is the '.json' in my route params coming from?

The Problem:
I'm new to Next.js (1 month) and Vercel (1 day), and between them something appears to be inserting .json in my urls on the search route, causing them to fail with error:
[GET] /_next/data/9MJcw6afNEM1L-eax6OWi/search/hand.json?term=hand
10:21:52:87
Function Status:None
Edge Status:500
Duration:292.66 ms
Init Duration: 448.12 ms
Memory Used:88 MB
ID:fra1:fra1::ldzhz-1644484912454-0a30b71b6c90
User Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:97.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/97.0
TypeError: Only absolute URLs are supported
at getNodeRequestOptions (/var/task/node_modules/next/dist/compiled/node-fetch/index.js:1:61917)
at /var/task/node_modules/next/dist/compiled/node-fetch/index.js:1:63448
at new Promise (<anonymous>)
at Function.fetch [as default] (/var/task/node_modules/next/dist/compiled/node-fetch/index.js:1:63382)
at fetchWithAgent (/var/task/node_modules/next/dist/server/node-polyfill-fetch.js:38:39)
at getServerSideProps (/var/task/.next/server/chunks/730.js:238:28)
at Object.renderToHTML (/var/task/node_modules/next/dist/server/render.js:566:26)
at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:95:5)
at async doRender (/var/task/node_modules/next/dist/server/base-server.js:855:38)
at async /var/task/node_modules/next/dist/server/base-
server.js:950:28
2022-02-10T09:21:53.788Z 994c9544-0bbe-4a68-af83-f0e4c322151e ERROR
Error: Your `getServerSideProps` function did not return an object. Did you forget to add a `return`?
at Object.renderToHTML (/var/task/node_modules/next/dist/server/render.js:592:19)
at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:95:5)
at async doRender (/var/task/node_modules/next/dist/server/base-server.js:855:38)
at async /var/task/node_modules/next/dist/server/base-server.js:950:28
at async /var/task/node_modules/next/dist/server/response-cache.js:63:36 { page: '/search/[term]'}
RequestId: 994c9544-0bbe-4a68-af83-f0e4c322151e Error: Runtime exited with error: exit status 1
Runtime.ExitError
Though the browser says https://.../search/hand as it should.
No such thing is happening on my local server build though, and it works perfectly well.
Background/Code Snippets:
The search route is the only route that uses SSR, and is also the only route with this issue. It is a dynamic route, so it seems either next in production or vercel expects some kind of json for it -presumably pre-rendered content-, and is replacing the route URL with json.
Also I have had to use the VERCEL_URL environment variable to prepare a URL for fetch requests, so this may also be messing up the URL, but the .json in the error message makes me think otherwise, since search should not be pre-rendered.
The Page Structure For the Search Route (Index imports the component in [term] and defines its own getServerSide props to accommodate a search route without a param):
|-Search
|- [term].js
|- Index.js
The Code For [term].js:
...
export default function Search({results, currentSearch}){
...
}
export async function getServerSideProps(req) {
const { criteria, page } = req.query;
const { term } = req.params || { term: '' };
try {
const data = await fetch(`${process.env.VERCEL_URL}/api/search/${term}?criteria=${criteria || 'name'}&page=${page}`);
const searchRes = await data.json();
return {
props: {
results: searchRes.data,
currentSearch: searchRes.query
}
}
} catch (e) {
console.log(e)
}
}
Index.js is similar:
import Search from "./[term]";
export default Search;
export async function getServerSideProps(req) {
const { criteria, page } = req.query;
const { term } = req.params || { term: '' };
if(!term){
return {
props: {
results: [],
currentSearch: {}
}
}
}
try {
const data = await fetch(`${process.env.VERCEL_URL}/api/search/${term}?criteria=${criteria || 'name'}&page=${page}`);
const searchRes = await data.json();
return {
props: {
results: searchRes.data,
currentSearch: searchRes.query
}
}
} catch (e) {
console.log(e)
}
}
The API I'm trying to fetch from is confirmed to be working, so this problem is strictly regarding pages, or .json being provided to the fetch method from router params.
It would turn out that VERCEL_URL is actually an absolute URL (It does not include a protocol). I had to deploy console.log statements to find this. A little embarrassed that I missed it in the docs.
The .json was not actually in the query or params, and therefore not in the fetch request. The fetch failed because the url had no protocol.
The .json in the page url must be from Next's internal operations, and does not mean the page is being built ahead of time. Yes it is being rendered using some json, but my thinking that the json indicates a pre-rendered page(SSG/ISR) was wrong. This must mean Server Side Rendering will also make use of such json, but only at runtime, when the request is made.
The use of .json after the params slug in the GET requests for a page has no bearing on the internal flow of your app, provided it has worked correctly. If you see it in error messages, know that it is from Next and examine other parts of the code at the point of failure.
The page structure I attempted ([param].js + index.js in the same
directory) is fine, which is why my local build could work properly.
I want to delete this question because the solution is essentially one that a thorough look in the docs would have revealed, but at the same time I think the mistake itself is an easily made one and that some of the conclusions listed above(particularly the one about json being used in all next routes) could save time spent debugging for some new users of Next/Vercel.

Make a NestJS route send in response a pretty formatted JSON

I have a NestJS route which sends back in response, a JSON not well formatted (like minified),
I want to make this JSON easier to read, like a JSON prettier or JSON formatted,
Do someone knows how to do it in NestJS ? I accept answers for other NodeJS frameworks like Express, maybe it will work in NestJS too...
Prettifying the JSON response should be the responsibility of the client, not the server. Otherwise you could be sending a lot of white space which will bloat the response size and could lead to a crash due to having a response too large. If you are using something like Postman, it should be easy to prettify it, I think Postman might do it by default. If you are looking at the response in some web browser, you could use JSON.parse() on the response and it should make the response an actual JSON which console.log() would then print in a pretty way.
You should try https://www.postman.com or https://insomnia.rest/. It can save you a lot of time when it comes to testing an API.
While you shouldn't do it in prod as mentioned above, there's number of cases where it makes a lot of sense (e.g. in dev env). You can achieve this in a bit hacky way:
Access express instance inside nest through breaking abstraction. It's not exposed on INest interface, so you'll need to cast it to any type to bypass Typescript check
Set undocumented express property "json spaces", which will set formatting for all JSON responses over the app
const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development') {
(app as any).httpAdapter.instance.set('json spaces', 2);
}
await app.listen(3000);
It works for me:
// src/main.ts
async function bootstrap() {
const app = await NestFactory.create(AppModule);
if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production') {
app.getHttpAdapter().getInstance().set('json spaces', 2);
}
await app.listen(process.env.PORT);
}
Define return type string on your controller
Set the Content-Type: application/json response header
Use JSON.stringify to format your object with whitespace
Example controller code:
import { Controller, Get, Header } from '#nestjs/common';
#Controller('diagnostics')
export class DiagnosticsController {
#Get()
#Header('Content-Type', 'application/json')
findAll(): string {
const statusCode = 200;
const statusText = 'OK';
const info = {
self: 'NestJS Diagnostics Report',
status: {
statusCode,
statusText,
},
};
return JSON.stringify(info, null, 2);
}
}

How to get around previously declared json body-parser in Nodebb?

I am writing a private plugin for nodebb (open forum software). In the nodebb's webserver.js file there is a line that seems to be hogging all incoming json data.
app.use(bodyParser.json(jsonOpts));
I am trying to convert all incoming json data for one of my end-points into raw data. However the challenge is I cannot remove or modify the line above.
The following code works ONLY if I temporarily remove the line above.
var rawBodySaver = function (req, res, buf, encoding) {
if (buf && buf.length) {
req.rawBody = buf.toString(encoding || 'utf8');
}
}
app.use(bodyParser.json({ verify: rawBodySaver }));
However as soon as I put the app.use(bodyParser.json(jsonOpts)); middleware back into the webserver.js file it stops working. So it seems like body-parser only processes the first parser that matches the incoming data type and then skips all the rest?
How can I get around that? I could not find any information in their official documentation.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
** Update **
The problem I am trying to solve is to correctly handle an incoming stripe webhook event. In the official stripe documentation they suggested I do the following:
// Match the raw body to content type application/json
app.post('/webhook', bodyParser.raw({type: 'application/json'}),
(request, response) => {
const sig = request.headers['stripe-signature'];
let event;
try {
event = stripe.webhooks.constructEvent(request.body, sig,
endpointSecret);
} catch (err) {
return response.status(400).send(Webhook Error:
${err.message});
}
Both methods, the original at the top of this post and the official stripe recommended way, construct the stripe event correctly but only if I remove the middleware in webserver. So my understanding now is that you cannot have multiple middleware to handle the same incoming data. I don't have much wiggle room when it comes to the first middleware except for being able to modify the argument (jsonOpts) that is being passed to it and comes from a .json file. I tried adding a verify field but I couldn't figure out how to add a function as its value. I hope this makes sense and sorry for not stating what problem I am trying to solve initially.
The only solution I can find without modifying the NodeBB code is to insert your middleware in a convenient hook (that will be later than you want) and then hack into the layer list in the app router to move that middleware earlier in the app layer list to get it in front of the things you want to be in front of.
This is a hack so if Express changes their internal implementation at some future time, then this could break. But, if they ever changed this part of the implementation, it would likely only be in a major revision (as in Express 4 ==> Express 5) and you could just adapt the code to fit the new scheme or perhaps NodeBB will have given you an appropriate hook by then.
The basic concept is as follows:
Get the router you need to modify. It appears it's the app router you want for NodeBB.
Insert your middleware/route as you normally would to allow Express to do all the normal setup for your middleware/route and insert it in the internal Layer list in the app router.
Then, reach into the list, take it off the end of the list (where it was just added) and insert it earlier in the list.
Figure out where to put it earlier in the list. You probably don't want it at the very start of the list because that would put it after some helpful system middleware that makes things like query parameter parsing work. So, the code looks for the first middleware that has a name we don't recognize from the built-in names we know and insert it right after that.
Here's the code for a function to insert your middleware.
function getAppRouter(app) {
// History:
// Express 4.x throws when accessing app.router and the router is on app._router
// But, the router is lazy initialized with app.lazyrouter()
// Express 5.x again supports app.router
// And, it handles the lazy construction of the router for you
let router;
try {
router = app.router; // Works for Express 5.x, Express 4.x will throw when accessing
} catch(e) {}
if (!router) {
// Express 4.x
if (typeof app.lazyrouter === "function") {
// make sure router has been created
app.lazyrouter();
}
router = app._router;
}
if (!router) {
throw new Error("Couldn't find app router");
}
return router;
}
// insert a method on the app router near the front of the list
function insertAppMethod(app, method, path, fn) {
let router = getAppRouter(app);
let stack = router.stack;
// allow function to be called with no path
// as insertAppMethod(app, metod, fn);
if (typeof path === "function") {
fn = path;
path = null;
}
// add the handler to the end of the list
if (path) {
app[method](path, fn);
} else {
app[method](fn);
}
// now remove it from the stack
let layerObj = stack.pop();
// now insert it near the front of the stack,
// but after a couple pre-built middleware's installed by Express itself
let skips = new Set(["query", "expressInit"]);
for (let i = 0; i < stack.length; i++) {
if (!skips.has(stack[i].name)) {
// insert it here before this item
stack.splice(i, 0, layerObj);
break;
}
}
}
You would then use this to insert your method like this from any NodeBB hook that provides you the app object sometime during startup. It will create your /webhook route handler and then insert it earlier in the layer list (before the other body-parser middleware).
let rawMiddleware = bodyParser.raw({type: 'application/json'});
insertAppMethod(app, 'post', '/webhook', (request, response, next) => {
rawMiddleware(request, response, (err) => {
if (err) {
next(err);
return;
}
const sig = request.headers['stripe-signature'];
let event;
try {
event = stripe.webhooks.constructEvent(request.body, sig, endpointSecret);
// you need to either call next() or send a response here
} catch (err) {
return response.status(400).send(`Webhook Error: ${err.message}`);
}
});
});
The bodyParser.json() middleware does the following:
Check the response type of an incoming request to see if it is application/json.
If it is that type, then read the body from the incoming stream to get all the data from the stream.
When it has all the data from the stream, parse it as JSON and put the result into req.body so follow-on request handlers can access the already-read and already-parsed data there.
Because it reads the data from the stream, there is no longer any more data in the stream. Unless it saves the raw data somewhere (I haven't looked to see if it does), then the original RAW data is gone - it's been read from the stream already. This is why you can't have multiple different middleware all trying to process the same request body. Whichever one goes first reads the data from the incoming stream and then the original data is no longer there in the stream.
To help you find a solution, we need to know what end-problem you're really trying to solve? You will not be able to have two middlewares both looking for the same content-type and both reading the request body. You could replace bodyParser.json() that does both what it does now and does something else for your purpose in the same middleware, but not in separate middleware.

Unable to access data inside a string (i.e. [ object Object ]) that was originally sent as a JSON object

I'm using axios to send a JSON object as a parameter to my api. Before it post request is fired, my data starts of as a JSON object. On the server side, when I console.log(req.params) the data is returned as such
[object Object]
When I used typeof, it returned a string. So then I went to use JSON.parse(). However, when I used that, it returned an error as such
SyntaxError: Unexpected token o in JSON at position 1
I looked for solutions, but nothing I tried seemed to work. Now I'm thinking I'm sending the data to the server incorrectly.
Here's my post request using axios:
createMedia: async function(mediaData) {
console.log("SAVING MEDIA OBJECT");
console.log(typeof mediaData)
let json = await axios.post(`http://localhost:3001/api/media/new/${mediaData}`)
return json;
}
Any thoughts on how I can solve this?
You need to update your code using axios to provide the mediaData in the body of the request instead of the URL:
createMedia: async function(mediaData) {
console.log("SAVING MEDIA OBJECT");
console.log(typeof mediaData)
let json = await axios.post(`http://localhost:3001/api/media/new/`, mediaData)
return json;
}
In the backend (assuming you're using express here), you need to configure your application to use bodyParser:
var express = require('express')
, app = express.createServer();
app.use(express.bodyParser());
And then in your controller update your console.log(req.params) to console.log(req.body); then restart your node server

How to process input in json format with multiple entry using node.js, express, and mongodb as API backend?

I want to process below json input (transferred throught REST API, using POST method) by using node.js, express, and mongodb as my API server.
{
taskname: "task1"
status: "ongoing"
contributor: [
{
name: "andy",
role: "task owner"
},
{
name: "brian",
role: "executor"
}
],
duedate: "2018-03-03"
}
What i know right now is from this tutorial (basic nodejs+express+mongodb) https://www.codementor.io/olatundegaruba/nodejs-restful-apis-in-10-minutes-q0sgsfhbd
Could you show me how to solve this?
Thanks for your kind attention.
Let's say you want to console.log what you get from the request with express.js,
You should install body-parser in order to get your request body,
To access post route, you need to define the route of the request and do something like this:
app.post('yourRoute', (req,res) => {
console.log(req.body)
}
If you want to get a specific value from your request, for example get the taskname value from your json,
type something like this in your post route: req.body.taskname
You should initialize express of course like so:
var express = require('express'),
app = express()