Empty body in fetch post request

Trietch picture Trietch · Jan 3, 2019 · Viewed 14.6k times · Source

i'm struggling with the fetch API in javascript. When i try to POST something to my server with fetch, the request body an empty array. But when i use Postman it works... Here is my server code in NodeJS :

const express = require('express')
const app = express()
const port = 3000

app.use(express.json())
app.post('/api', function (req, res) {
    console.log(req.body)
})
app.listen(port)

and here is my client:

fetch('http://"theserverip":3000/api', {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
    mode: 'no-cors',
    body: JSON.stringify({
        name: 'dean',
        login: 'dean',
    })
})
.then((res) => {
    console.log(res)
})

The problem is that on the SERVER side, the req.body is empty. Can someone help me? Thank you !

Answer

Phil picture Phil · Jan 3, 2019

The issue is

mode: 'no-cors'

From the documentation...

Prevents the method from being anything other than HEAD, GET or POST, and the headers from being anything other than simple headers

The simple content-type header restriction allows

  • text/plain,
  • application/x-www-form-urlencoded, and
  • multipart/form-data

This causes your nicely crafted Content-Type: application/json header to become content-type: text/plain (at least when tested through Chrome).

Since your Express server is expecting JSON, it won't parse this request.

I recommend omitting the mode config. This uses the default "cors" option instead.


Since your request is not simple, you'll probably want to add some CORS middleware to your Express server.

Another (slightly hacky) option is to tell Express to parse text/plain requests as JSON. This allows you to send JSON strings as simple requests which can also avoid a pre-flight OPTIONS request, thus lowering the overall network traffic...

app.use(express.json({
  type: ['application/json', 'text/plain']
}))

EDIT: Added ending parenthesis to app.use final code block.