What does 'extended' mean in express 4.0?

Question

I\'m using express and also body-parser in my app.

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

But, What does \'extended\' mean in

Answer 1

When extended property is set to true, the URL-encoded data will be parsed with the qs library.

On the contrary,

when extended property is set to false, the URL-encoded data will instead be parsed with the querystring library.

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The differences between parsing with `qs library` vs `querystring library`

• qs library allows you to create a nested object from your query string.

  var qs = require("qs")
  var result = qs.parse("person[name]=bobby&person[age]=3")
  console.log(result) // { person: { name: 'bobby', age: '3' } }
  

  
  

• query-string library does not support creating a nested object from your query string.

  var queryString = require("query-string")
  var result = queryString.parse("person[name]=bobby&person[age]=3")
  console.log(result) // { 'person[age]': '3', 'person[name]': 'bobby' }
  

  
  

• qs library will not filter out '?' from the query string.

  var qs = require("qs")
  var result = qs.parse("?a=b")
  console.log(result) // { '?a': 'b' }
  

  
  

• query-string library will filter out '?' from the query string.

  var queryString = require("query-string")
  var result = queryString.parse("?a=b")
  console.log(result) // { a: 'b' }
  

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app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true })) // for parsing application/x-www-form-urlencoded

For more information, you may refer to Leonid Beschastny's answer, and npm compare qs vs query-string.