Express body-parser req.body with formdata is empty object

Question

Somehow my req.body is always empty, maybe you have an idea:

here is my server code:

const Express = require('express');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');

const app = new Express();
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
app.use(bodyParser.json());

app.post('/save', (req, res) => {
  console.log(req.body)  // => {}
  res.send(req.body);
});

const env = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'production';
app.listen(3000, err => {
   if (err) { return console.error(err); }
   console.info(`Server running on http://localhost:${port} [${env}]`);
});

When I try to send formdata with javascript the req.body is empty:

const data = new FormData(document.querySelector('form'));
console.log(data);  // seems empty already??? FormData{}??
const xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open('POST', 'http://localhost:3000/save');
xhr.send(data);

Same with postman:

I don’t understand this…

Sending x-www-form-urlencoded with postman or raw (application/json) works in postman. But sending the same headers with Formdata in javascript will still result in an empty object…

user_437797 · Answer

body-parser is deprecated and isn't a part of Express anymore.

Also, body-parser does not provide the functionality to parse form-data post data.

From the body-parser repository description:

This does not handle multipart bodies, due to their complex and typically large nature. For multipart bodies, you may be interested in the following modules:

user_6853834 · Answer

I had this same problem, I was using the fetch api, sending form data to an node.js/express backend. The problem was that I had set enctype='multipart/form-data' on the form and I was also setting Content-type: multipart/form-data in the fetch Headers. Removing the Content-type from the Headers got everything to work. I got the solution from here => https://github.com/expressjs/multer/issues/411

user_12002311 · Answer

If you are using formdata, you should configure Multer in backend. I was facing the same issue, I solved it by configuring Multer

user_12816049 · Answer

Express and body parser Version :

"dependencies": {
    "body-parser": "^1.19.0",
    "express": "^4.17.1"
  }

app.js:

const express = require('express');
var bodyParser = require('body-parser')

const app = express();

app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({     // to support URL-encoded bodies
  extended: true
})); 
app.use( bodyParser.json()); 

const baseUrl = '/api/v1/tours';
app.post(baseUrl, (req, res)=>{
    console.log(req.body);
    res.send('Done');
})
//starting server
const port = 3000;
app.listen(port, ()=>{
    console.log(`app running on port ${port}...`);
});

To send raw data please select JSON from the list

Express body-parser req.body with formdata is empty object

6 Answers