Express, Request Parameters

Sep 12, 2018updated Apr 26, 2019

A handy reference to the Express Request object properties like body, params, query, cookies, and ip, plus how to read GET query strings from req.query.

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Request parameters

I mentioned how the Request object holds all the HTTP request information.

These are the main properties you’ll likely use:

Property	Description
.app	holds a reference to the Express app object
.baseUrl	the base path on which the app responds
.body	contains the data submitted in the request body (must be parsed and populated manually before you can access it)
.cookies	contains the cookies sent by the request (needs the `cookie-parser` middleware)
.hostname	the hostname as defined in the Host HTTP header value
.ip	the client IP
.method	the HTTP method used
.params	the route named parameters
.path	the URL path
.protocol	the request protocol
.query	an object containing all the query strings used in the request
.secure	true if the request is secure (uses HTTPS)
.signedCookies	contains the signed cookies sent by the request (needs the `cookie-parser` middleware)
.xhr	true if the request is an XMLHttpRequest

How to retrieve the GET query string parameters using Express

The query string is the part that comes after the URL path, and starts with a question mark ?.

Example:

?name=flavio

Multiple query parameters can be added using &:

?name=flavio&age=35

How do you get those query string values in Express?

Express makes it very easy by populating the Request.query object for us:

const express = require('express')
const app = express()

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  console.log(req.query)
})

app.listen(8080)

This object is filled with a property for each query parameter.

If there are no query params, it’s an empty object.

This makes it easy to iterate on it using the for…in loop:

for (const key in req.query) {
  console.log(key, req.query[key])
}

This will print the query property key and the value.

You can access single properties as well:

req.query.name //flavio
req.query.age //35

How to retrieve the POST query string parameters using Express

POST query parameters are sent by HTTP clients for example by forms, or when performing a POST request sending data.

How can you access this data?

If the data was sent as JSON, using Content-Type: application/json, you will use the express.json() middleware:

const express = require('express')
const app = express()

app.use(express.json())

If the data was sent using Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded, you will need to use the express.urlencoded() middleware:

const express = require('express')
const app = express()

app.use(express.urlencoded({
  extended: true
}))

In both cases you can access the data by referencing it from Request.body:

app.post('/form', (req, res) => {
  const name = req.body.name
})

Note: older Express versions required the use of the body-parser module to process POST data. This is no longer the case as of Express 4.16 (released in September 2017) and later versions.

Tagged: Express.js · All topics

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