JSON structure output - json

I'm working on a school assignment, Node.js, and have trouble with getting my output correct. It's the res.end part that isn't working, but res.end(stdout); works. Why?
case "/status":
/**
* Run child process "uname -a".
*/
cp.exec("uname -a", (error, stdout, stderr) => {
if (error || stderr) {
// Do something with the error(s)
console.log("Something went wrong...", error, stderr);
}
// status route
res.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type": "application/json" });
res.end({
"uname": stdout
});
});
break;

As specified in the Node.js docs, res.end can only take a string or a buffer - or nothing at all - as its first parameter. If you wish to send JSON using it, you'll have to set the content type (which you've done) and stringify the object:
res.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type": "application/json" });
res.end(JSON.stringify({
"uname": stdout
}));
This is effectively what Express.js does when you call res.send/res.json on an object.

Related

POSTing json to API with Angular 2/4

I am new to angular 4 and REST API development. I have developed a Login API in back-end and it works fine when I call it using Postman:
In the front-end application which is an Angular 4 project, I have created a service to call this login API. Here is the method I created in this service:
sendCredential(username: string, password: string) {
const url = 'http://localhost:8080/authenticate/user';
const body = '{"username": "' + username + '", "password": "' + password + '"}';
const headers = new Headers(
{
'Content-Type': 'application/json'
});
return this.http.post(url, body, {headers: headers});
}
My first question is:
Is this the correct way to pass the json object and call this API?
And I also created a component which calls the method in the service. Here is the method/event-handler I created in this component:
onSubmit(uname: string, pwd: string) {
this.loginService.sendCredential(uname, pwd).subscribe(
res => {
this.loggedIn = true;
localStorage.setItem('PortalAdminHasLoggedIn', 'true');
location.reload();
},
err => console.log(err)
);
}
My second question is:
How should I check whether a token is returned back or an error?
Question 1:
You do not need to stringify the body object when you do a http.post() in angular. Just use a normal object will do, and the Http class will help you parse it internally:
sendCredential(username: string, password: string) {
const url = 'http://localhost:8080/authenticate/user';
//do not need to stringify your body
const body = {
username, password
}
const headers = new Headers(
{
'Content-Type': 'application/json'
});
return this.http.post(url, body, {headers: headers});
}
Question 2:
As for your error, note that Angular also catch every http error. and by http error, it means that any status code that is <200 or >=300 will be an error. So only status codes that is in between 200 and 300 is considered successful. Upon an error received, angular will throw an Observable error, which you will need to handle explicitly (which you did it correctly):
onSubmit(uname: string, pwd: string) {
this.loginService.sendCredential(uname, pwd).subscribe(
res => {
//token should be in your res object
this.loggedIn = true;
localStorage.setItem('PortalAdminHasLoggedIn', 'true');
location.reload();
},
err => {
//handle your error here.
//there shouldn't be any token here
console.log(error);
}
);
}
With your above code, you should receive your token in your successful callback, and it will be in the res object. If there's an error, no token should be received and you should handle the error at the error callback.

NodeJS get request. JSON.parse: unexpected token

I'm writing a function in NodeJS that hits an Url and retrieves its json. But I'm getting an error in JSON.parse: unexpected token.
In json validators the string is passing the test when I copy from the browser and paste into the text field, but when I paste the Url for the parser to get the json it show me an invalid message.
I guess it is something with the encoding of the response, but I can;t figure out what it is. Here if my function with an example Url.
function getJsonFromUrl(url, callback)
{
url = 'http://steamcommunity.com/id/coveirao/inventory/json/730/2/';
http.get(
url
, function (res) {
// explicitly treat incoming data as utf8 (avoids issues with multi-byte chars)
res.setEncoding('utf8');
// incrementally capture the incoming response body
var body = '';
res.on('data', function (d) {
body += d;
});
// do whatever we want with the response once it's done
res.on('end', function () {
console.log(body.stringfy());
try {
var parsed = JSON.parse(body);
} catch (err) {
console.error('Unable to parse response as JSON', err);
return callback(err, null);
}
// pass the relevant data back to the callback
console.log(parsed);
callback(null, parsed);
});
}).on('error', function (err) {
// handle errors with the request itself
console.error('Error with the request:', err.message);
callback(err, null);
});
}
Can you help me, please?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Concatenating response as string might have issues with encoding e.g. if buffer of every chunk is converted to string with partial UTF-8 encodings at beginning or end. Thus I'd advise to concatenate as buffer first:
var body = new Buffer( 0 );
res.on('data', function (d) {
body = Buffer.concat( [ body, d ] );
});
Of course it might help to explicitly convert buffer to string on your behalf rather than relying on JSON.parse() doing it implicitly. This might be essential in case of using unusual encoding.
res.on('end', function () {
try {
var parsed = JSON.parse(body.toString("utf8"));
} catch (err) {
console.error('Unable to parse response as JSON', err);
return callback(err, null);
}
...
Aside from that the content delivered by given URL seems to be pretty valid JSON.

ExpressJs returns empty res.json

When validating a mongoose schema in 'pre' of parallel middleware
schema.pre('save', true, function (next, done) {
if(...) {
next(new Error('Some error message'));
}
next();
});
I return an error and it is available in the callback function:
model.save({},{}, function(err) {
res.json(400, err);
console.log(err)// I see in the console: [Error: 'Some error message']
})
But when I do
res.json(400, err);
I get an empty response
{} No properties
What is the reason for this?
JSON can't stringify errors. You'll need to use something else to send the error.
Perhaps just res.send(err.message), or something similar.

passport send error by json

I'm making an app with express + passport and angularJS; I want to be able to send any errors produced from passport (such as username taken or no email provided) by json so my angularJS app can receive these errors in a json response. More specifically right now I want to have a json response to my signup POST method that outputs any errors. I have tried to do this for myself and I've search all over the web and stack overflow I just cannot work this out!
Here is my users route file in express:
var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();
var isAuthenticated = require('../config/isAuthenticated');
module.exports = function(passport){
router.get('/loggedin', function(req, res){
res.send(req.isAuthenticated() ? req.user : '0');
});
router.post('/signup', passport.authenticate('local-signup', {
successRedirect : '/',
failureRedirect : '/signup',
failureFlash: true
}));
router.post('/login', passport.authenticate('local-login'), function(req, res){
res.send(req.user);
});
router.post('/signout', function(req,res){
req.logout();
res.json({redirect: '/'});
});
router.get('/authtest', isAuthenticated, function(req, res){
res.render('authtest', {user: req.user});
});
return router;
};
This is my passport signup strategy:
passport.use('local-signup', new LocalStrategy({
usernameField : 'username',
passwordField : 'password',
passReqToCallback : true
},
function(req, username, password, done){
process.nextTick(function(){
User.findOne({'local.username' : username}, function(err, user){
if(err) return done(err);
if (user) { //username already exists
return done(null, false, {message: 'Username already exists'});
} else if(!req.body.email) { //no email address provided
return done(null, false, {message: 'You must provide an email address!'});
} else {
var newUser = new User();
newUser.local.username = username;
newUser.generateHash(password, function(err, hash){
if(err) return done(err);
newUser.local.password = hash;
});
newUser.email = req.body.email;
newUser.servers = [];
newUser.save(function(err){
if(err) throw err;
return done(null, newUser);
});
};
});
});
}
));
I know looking at my code right now it looks like I haven't tried to solve this myself at all but this is just my latest working code; I have been stuck at this for the past few days!
Any help would be greatly appreciated :)
According to the current code of passport this is probably achievable by passing custom callback to handle all results of authentiction yourself. This callback is given after options or instead of those.
passport( "local-signup", { ... }, callbackFn );
or
passport( "local-login", callbackFn );
This callback is used in all resulting situations of trying to authenticae. It is thus invoked on processing errors like this:
callbackFn( err )
If (all configured) authentications have failed it is called with
callbackFn( null, false, challenge(s), status(es) )
On successfully having authenticated user the callback is invoked like so:
callbackFn( null, user, infos )
with infos optionally provided by strategies.
Now comes the bottom-side: In either situation passport.authenticate() skips usual processing but instantly invokes provided callback to care for the rest. This includes processing of any options passed in call for passport.authenticate() like flashing messages, preparing session and request for containing authenticated user etc.
Since options given passport.authenticate() are never passed into callback there is actually no obvious reason to use both.
When I was stumbling over the very same problem (linking passport-service with angular-js POST request) I declined to consider use of callback a proper solution. This callback isn't documented. And it doesn't even look quite useful for it isn't passing req, res and next to pass any actual request in callback. Thus it makes very little sense to use it at all and I'd expect it to vanish soon or to change its behaviour quite much.
So the second approach was about trying to figure out why there is a problem in AngularJS. Passport is sending plain text Unauthorized in response with status code 401. AngularJS is trying to parse this as JSON and produces Syntax error. The text Unauthorized results from passprt ending response very simply by invoking
res.statusCode = 401;
res.end(http.STATUS_CODES[res.statusCode]);
Thus a proper workaround might try to replace
either text in http.STATUS_CODES though this is having impact on processing further requests and thus isn't preferrable
or res.end() by an overloaded method acting differently if res.statusCode is 401.
Due to affecting any current request, only, I tried the latter. Replaced res.end() might be used to send any text you want:
router.post('/login',
function(req, res, next) {
var _end = res.end;
res.end = function() {
if (res.statusCode === 401) {
return _end('{"status":"Unauthorized"}');
}
return _end.apply(this, arguments);
};
next();
},
passport.authenticate('local-login'),
function(req, res) {
res.send(req.user);
}
);
Alternatively the replaced method might add previously missing response header information on content type, for this was actually causing issues in AngularJS processing that response as JSON by default.
router.post('/login',
function(req, res, next) {
var _end = res.end;
res.end = function() {
if (res.statusCode === 401) {
res.set("Content-Type", "text/plain");
}
return _end.apply(this, arguments);
};
next();
},
passport.authenticate('local-login'),
function(req, res) {
res.send(req.user);
}
);
Finally, either approach is really just a workaround. I think passport is in the need for revising this annoying limitation.

How to return a complex JSON response with Node.js?

Using nodejs and express, I'd like to return one or multiple objects (array) using JSON. In the code below I output one JSON object at a time. It works but this isn't exactly what I want. The response produced isn't a valid JSON response since I have many objects.
I am well aware that I could simply add all objects to an array and return that specific array in res.end. However I am afraid this could become heavy to process and memory intensive.
What is the proper way to acheive this with nodejs? Is query.each the right method to call?
app.get('/users/:email/messages/unread', function(req, res, next) {
var query = MessageInfo
.find({ $and: [ { 'email': req.params.email }, { 'hasBeenRead': false } ] });
res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' });
query.each(function(err, msg) {
if (msg) {
res.write(JSON.stringify({ msgId: msg.fileName }));
} else {
res.end();
}
});
});
On express 3 you can use directly res.json({foo:bar})
res.json({ msgId: msg.fileName })
See the documentation
I don't know if this is really any different, but rather than iterate over the query cursor, you could do something like this:
query.exec(function (err, results){
if (err) res.writeHead(500, err.message)
else if (!results.length) res.writeHead(404);
else {
res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' });
res.write(JSON.stringify(results.map(function (msg){ return {msgId: msg.fileName}; })));
}
res.end();
});
[Edit] After reviewing the Mongoose documentation, it looks like you can send each query result as a separate chunk; the web server uses chunked transfer encoding by default so all you have to do is wrap an array around the items to make it a valid JSON object.
Roughly (untested):
app.get('/users/:email/messages/unread', function(req, res, next) {
var firstItem=true, query=MessageInfo.find(/*...*/);
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'application/json'});
query.each(function(docs) {
// Start the JSON array or separate the next element.
res.write(firstItem ? (firstItem=false,'[') : ',');
res.write(JSON.stringify({ msgId: msg.fileName }));
});
res.end(']'); // End the JSON array and response.
});
Alternatively, as you mention, you can simply send the array contents as-is. In this case the response body will be buffered and sent immediately, which may consume a large amount of additional memory (above what is required to store the results themselves) for large result sets. For example:
// ...
var query = MessageInfo.find(/*...*/);
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'application/json'});
res.end(JSON.stringify(query.map(function(x){ return x.fileName })));