Node.js Web Apps With Express Getting info from the request
Example
To get info from the requesting url (notice that req is the request object in the handler function of routes). Consider this route definition /settings/:user_id and this particular example /settings/32135?field=name
// get the full path
req.originalUrl // => /settings/32135?field=name
// get the user_id param
req.params.user_id // => 32135
// get the query value of the field
req.query.field // => 'name'
You can also get headers of the request, like this
req.get('Content-Type')
// "text/plain"
To simplify getting other info you can use middlewares. For example, to get the body info of the request, you can use the body-parser middleware, which will transform raw request body into usable format.
var app = require('express')();
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
app.use(bodyParser.json()); // for parsing application/json
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true })); // for parsing application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Now suppose a request like this
PUT /settings/32135
{
"name": "Peter"
}
You can access the posted name like this
req.body.name
// "Peter"
In a similar way, you can access cookies from the request, you also need a middleware like cookie-parser
req.cookies.name
