GET & POST

So far, we've only been rendering views, which is why we've been using GET for all of our routes. Now that we're working with data, we'll start to see how the other HTTP verbs come into play. Here we will focus on GET and POST.

Objectives

• Implement GET and POST routes in express.

1. Set up a new express app called RESTful_creatures.

Incorporate express-ejs-layouts.

Backend data store

We'll start workign with data from an actual database soon, but for now we'll just focus on routes and use, a JSON object as our data store. In the root of the project, create a dinosaurs.json file with the following contents:

[
  {
    "name":"Littlefoot",
    "type":"apatosaurus"
  },
  {
    "name":"Cera",
    "type":"triceratops"
  },
  {
    "name":"Ducky",
    "type":"saurolophus"
  },
  {
    "name":"Petrie",
    "type":"pteranodon"
  },
  {
    "name":"Spike",
    "type":"stegosaurus"
  }
]

2. Index / Read (GET) route

Index is a route (URL) that lists all items of a specific type. It is a GET request to (in this example) /dinosaurs.

Format the ejs to display the data. Assume that we will pass the data in as myDinos.

Index view -- in /views/dinosaurs/index.ejs

<ul>
  <% myDinos.forEach(function(dino) { %>
  <li><%= dino.name %> is a <%= dino.type %></li>
  <% }); %>
</ul>

To access our data, we'll use the fs (filesystem) core module. Import this module in index.js

var fs = require('fs');

Now let's pull in our data and take a took at it.

// lists all dinosaurs
app.get('/dinosaurs', function(req, res) {
  var dinosaurs = fs.readFileSync('./dinosaurs.json');
  console.log(dinosaurs);
});

Note: This console.log() is in our server file, which means it will print to our terminal, NOT the browser inspector.

That doesn't look very helpful, does it? That's because we're pulling in a JSON object, which isn't quite the same as a normal JS object. JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), is a standard format for data that is being transmitted (sent back and forth), and it needs to be parsed, or converted to a true JS data type - in this case, an array. Read more about working with JSON here.

Try parsing the data before printing it:

// lists all dinosaurs
app.get('/dinosaurs', function(req, res) {
  var dinosaurs = fs.readFileSync('./dinosaurs.json');
  var dinoData = JSON.parse(dinosaurs);
  console.log(dinoData);
});

That's more like it! Now lets send it to our EJS file:

// lists all dinosaurs
app.get('/dinosaurs', function(req, res) {
  var dinosaurs = fs.readFileSync('./dinosaurs.json');
  var dinoData = JSON.parse(dinosaurs);
  res.render('dinosaurs/index', {myDinos: dinoData});
});

In the above example we load the dinosaurs/index.ejs view and pass it dinoData as mydinosaurs. Now we can access myDinos directly in the index.ejs file.

3. Show / Read (GET) route

Show is a route that displays a single item of a specific type. Since we're still just reading data, it is a GET request to (in this example) /dinosaurs/1

Create a dinosaurs/show.ejs file:

<%= myDino.name %> is a <%= myDino.type %>.

Now let's write our show route. We can access the index from the url through the req.params object, but it will be a string. In order to use in to access an array value, we need to cast it to an integer.

Show route -- in index.js

//express show route for dinosaurs (lists one dinosaur)
app.get('/dinosaurs/:idx', function(req, res) {
  // get dinosaurs
  var dinosaurs = fs.readFileSync('./dinosaurs.json');
  var dinoData = JSON.parse(dinosaurs);

  //get array index from url parameter
  var dinoIndex = parseInt(req.params.idx);

  //render page with data of the specified animal
  res.render('dinosaurs/show', {myDino: dinoData[dinoIndex]});
});

In the above example we load the dinosaurs/show.ejs view and pass it a specific item from the dinoData array as myDino. We use the :idx url parameter to specify which animal to display. This means in the show.ejs file we can access myDino directly.

4. New / Read (GET) route

To create an item (dinosaur in this example) we need to get the data about that item, so we'll use a form.

Form tags have two attributes that are very import for their CRUD functionality:

• method: HTTP verb - GET or POST. You will use POST most often because it is significantly more secure. Read about the difference between these two methods by scrolling down to the "When to Use GET" AND "When to Use Post" sections of this page.
• action: This value should be a path. Specifically, it is the url pattern associated with the route that will handle the data - in this case, that will be the /dinosaurs POST route we will write.

Create a dinosaurs/new.ejs view that contains an html form:

<form method="POST" action="/dinosaurs">
  <label for="dinosaurType">Type</label>
  <input id="dinosaurType" type="text" name="type">

  <label for="dinosaurName">Name</label>
  <input id="dinosaurName" type="text" name="name">

  <input type="submit">
</form>

Now write a GET route so we can view this form at localhost:3000/dinosaurs/new:

app.get('/dinosaurs/new', function(req, res){
  res.render('dinosaurs/new');
});

Not working? Make sure this route is above the show (/dinosaurs/:idx) route, otherwise the show route will catch the request and pass in "new" as req.params.idx.

5. Create (POST) route

When the above form is submitted it will make a POST to the url /dinosaurs with the data contained in the form fields. To receive this data, we need to create the POST route and use some middleware to make the data readable. This middleware is new to express and prior to version 4, we had to manually install the body-parser node package in order to use it. (If it bothers you that we're glazing over how the data comes through before we send it through something like body-parser, read this article. It will always make sense to use some sort of framework like body-parser in practice, but if you're interested in capturing the raw data, see this article.)

This middleware will store the data submitted from the form in a user-friendly req.body object.

index.js

var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var ejsLayouts = require('express-ejs-layouts');
var fs = require('fs');

app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.use(ejsLayouts);
//body-parser middleware
app.use(express.urlencoded({extended: false}));

.
.
.

The express.urlencoded() middleware tells body-parser to capture urlencoded data (form data) and store it in req.body. The {extended: false} option ensures that the values in this body will either be strings or arrays. More on this here. Further discussion on it here.

Now, if we can access the form data in a POST route!

index.js

app.post('/dinosaurs', function(req, res) {
  console.log(req.body);
});

Try adding a new dinosaur and make sure you see the appropriate data come through in the terminal when you submit the form.

body-parser Summary: Form data is passed as payload of the request. Every field that has a name will be included in that payload and it is sent as form encoded text. When body-parser is used, it automatically parses the form body into a javascript object that we can use and it stores it in req.body so we can use it (similar to how we convert API responses to JSON. All of this is done as middleware, which we just configured.

The name attribute matters! In the above example we could access the dinosaur type form field by using req.body.type and the name field by using req.body.name. This correlates directly to the names given to the form fields in the form html above.

Generally, the code in the express route would contain code that would CREATE an item in a database and redirect the user to a route with a confirmation message of some sort or just back to the index route. For this example we're going to use the JSON file created above to store our data. This will involve three steps:

• Reading the JSON file

• Pushing the new animal to the object

• Writing the new JSON file using fs.writeFileSync (this will replace the old dinosaurs.json)

app.post('/dinosaurs', function(req, res) {
  // read dinosaurs file
  var dinosaurs = fs.readFileSync('./dinosaurs.json');
  dinosaurs = JSON.parse(dinosaurs);

  // add item to dinosaurs array
  dinosaurs.push(req.body);

  // save dinosaurs to the data.json file
  fs.writeFileSync('./dinosaurs.json', JSON.stringify(dinosaurs));

  //redirect to the GET /dinosaurs route (index)
  res.redirect('/dinosaurs');
});

JSON.stringify does the opposite of JSON.parse - it converts javascript data into json data.

Show / Read (GET) with a Form

There may be instances where you need to GET dinosaurs, but you don't want them all. A good example is filtering dinosaurs with a specific name via a search bar.

In these cases, you don't want to use a POST action, because POST is reserved for creating new resources. Instead, we can create another form with a GET method, and read the data via a querystring. This is an appropriate use of the GET form method because the user input is not sensitive.

Add a form to dinosaurs/index.ejs

<form method="GET" action="/dinosaurs">
  <label for="nameFilter">Filter by Name</label>
  <input id="nameFilter" type="text" name="nameFilter">
  <input type="submit">
</form>

The idea here is that the search bar allows the user to filter what's on the page, so it will be a GET request to /dinosaurs... but we already have a route for that! When you submit a form using the GET method, the key/value pairs are appended to the URL in a query string. Try searching for a dinosaur now and notice what happens to the URL. This query string, like parameters (req.params) is available via the request object. We'll use a conditional to check if there's a querystring, then filter the dinosaurs if one is present.

app.get('/dinosaurs', function(req, res) {
  var dinosaurs = fs.readFileSync('./dinosaurs.json');
  var dinoData = JSON.parse(dinosaurs);

  var nameFilter = req.query.nameFilter;

  if (nameFilter) {
    dinoData = dinoData.filter(function(dino) {
      return dino.name.toLowerCase() === nameFilter.toLowerCase();
    });
  }

  res.render('dinosaurs/index', {myDinos: dinoData});
});