Node.js - How to send data from html to express
this is form example in html:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title>CSS3 Contact Form</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="contact">
<h1>Send an email</h1>
<form action="/myaction" method="post">
<fieldset>
<label for="name">Name:</label>
<input type="text" id="name" name="name" placeholder="Enter your full name" />
<label for="email">Email:</label>
<input type="email" id="email" placeholder="Enter your email address" />
<label for="message">Message:</label>
<textarea id="message" placeholder="What's on your mind?"></textarea>
<input type="submit" value="Send message" />
</fieldset>
</form>
</div>
</body>
</html>
and this is node.js function that run on the server:
var sys = require('sys'),
http = require('http');
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
switch (req.url)
case '/myaction':
res.end(?????);
break;
}
}).listen(8080);
sys.puts('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8080/');
I have 2 questions:
- How can I call
myactionfunction in the node.js from the html page? Because the html file runs on port 80 and node.js on 8080 (when I try to move the node.js to port 80 it writes "// Unhandled 'error' event") - In the node.js function where I put "?????" how can I get data from the html form. When I type req.html.body.name I don't get the data...
Answer
Using http.createServer is very low-level and really not useful for creating web applications as-is.
A good framework to use on top of it is Express, and I would seriously suggest using it. You can install it using npm install express.
When you have, you can create a basic application to handle your form:
var express = require('express');
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var app = express();
//Note that in version 4 of express, express.bodyParser() was
//deprecated in favor of a separate 'body-parser' module.
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
//app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.post('/myaction', function(req, res) {
res.send('You sent the name "' + req.body.name + '".');
});
app.listen(8080, function() {
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:8080/');
});
You can make your form point to it using:
<form action="http://127.0.0.1:8080/myaction" method="post">
The reason you can't run Node on port 80 is because there's already a process running on that port (which is serving your index.html). You could use Express to also serve static content, like index.html, using the express.static middleware.