Node.js / Express / Mocha / Supertest Rest API - Empty Request Body

Question

I've looked everywhere I can to find a solution to this. The only thing I've found is an unanswered post. I apologize if I've overlooked something.

The problem is that when I try to get the POST values in the /createQuestion API, the body is empty/undefined. I get errors like this Cannot read proprety 'question' of undefined coming from the API.

The Express API:

app.post("/createQuestion", function(req, res) {
    var questionType = req.body.question.type;
    var questionText = req.body.question.text;
    var questionDuringClass = req.body.question.duringClass;

    // Do a bunch of stuff

    res.send(response);
});

The test:

    var should = require('should'); 
    var assert = require('assert');
    var request = require('supertest');  
    var winston = require('winston');

    request = request('http://localhost:8080');

        describe('Questions', function() { // Test suite
            before(function(done) {
                done();
            });

        it('Should create a freeResponse question', function(done) { // Test case
        var postData = {
            "question" : {
                "type" : "freeResponse",
                "text" : "This is a test freeResponse question (automated testing)",
                "duringClass" : "1"
            }
        };

        request()
        .post('/createQuestion')
        .send(postData)
        .expect(200)
        .end(function(err, res) { // .end handles the response
            if (err) {
                return done(err);
            }

            done();
        });
    });

 it('Should delete a freeResponse question', function(done) { // Test case
        var postData = {
            "question" : {
                "type" : "freeResponse",
                "text" : "This is a test freeResponse question (automated testing)",
                "duringClass" : "1"
            }
        };

        request()
        .post('/deleteQuestion')
        .send(postData)
        .expect(200)
        .end(function(err, res) { // .end handles the response
            if (err) {
                return done(err);
            }

            done();
        });
    });

What am I missing? Is the .send() sending the POST data in some different format? Is it not POSTing it to the body of the request?

Answer 1

It's probably that your app is not using bodyParser middleware in place.

app.use(express.bodyParser());

From the expressjs docs:

req.body

This property is an object containing the parsed request body. This feature is provided by the bodyParser() middleware, though other body parsing middleware may follow this convention as well. This property defaults to {} when bodyParser() is used.

Here you have a complete example

var express = require('express');
var request = require('supertest');

var assert = require('assert');
var app = express();

app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
  res.send('ok');
});

app.post('/createQuestion', function(req, res) {
  var message = req.body.partA + ' ' + req.body.partB;
  res.send(message);
});

describe('testing a simple application', function() {
  it('should return code 200', function(done) {
    request(app)
      .get('/')
      .expect(200)
      .end(function(err, res){
        if(err) {
          done(err);
        } else {
          done();
        }
      });
  });

  it('should return the same sent params concatenated', function(done) {
    request(app)
      .post('/createQuestion')
      .send({ partA: 'Hello', partB: 'World'})
      .expect(200, 'Hello World')
      .end(function(err, res){
        if(err) {
          done(err);
        } else {
          done();
        }
      });
  });

});