How should I format my POST data for testing an express API endpoint?

Question

I am following: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/getting-started-with-the-mern-stack.

I would like to test an API endpoint built using express. I would like to test POST.

The node server is running and I am using postman to check if the endpoint is working.

I am unclear on how to format the post data and my POST requests result in errors when I send them.

My API is below:

const express = require ('express');
const router = express.Router();
const Todo = require('../models/todo');

router.get('/todos', (req, res, next) => {

  //this will return all the data, exposing only the id and action field to the client
  Todo.find({}, 'action')
    .then(data => res.json(data))
    .catch(next)
});

router.post('/todos', (req, res, next) => {
  if(req.body.action){
    Todo.create(req.body)
      .then(data => res.json(data))
      .catch(next)
  }else {
    res.json({
      error: "The input field is empty"
    })
  }
});

router.delete('/todos/:id', (req, res, next) => {
  Todo.findOneAndDelete({"_id": req.params.id})
    .then(data => res.json(data))
    .catch(next)
})

module.exports = router;

My Schema is as follows:

const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const Schema = mongoose.Schema;

//create schema for todo
const TodoSchema = new Schema({
  action: {
    type: String,
    required: [true, 'The todo text field is required']
  }
})

//create model for todo
const Todo = mongoose.model('todo', TodoSchema);

module.exports = Todo;

In Postman, my URL is "http://localhost:5000/api/todos" and I am adding a body with the key as "action" and the value as "asdf". On send I get the following result:

{
    "error": "The input field is empty"
}

Could you please let me know how to format my body data so that I can test my POST endpoint properly?

Jatin Mehrotra · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-17 04:18:59Z

1

Open Postman, select request as POST and click on Body.
Under Body, select raw and insert your data in the space below like this and change from text to JSON option:-

{ "action":"asdf" }
Please make sure to add this to your app.js file before any route handler

const app = express(); app.use(express.json());

edited Aug 17, 2020 at 4:18

answered Aug 17, 2020 at 2:41

Jatin Mehrotra

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3 Comments

GoBlueDev Over a year ago

Sure, I just tried that. Unfortunately I get the same response back. { "error": "The input field is empty" }

Jatin Mehrotra Over a year ago

I am sorry I missed one thing, when you select raw make sure to change the option from text to JSON (you can see this beside GraphQl option) I have updated the answer, hope it helps.

Hrishikesh D Kakkad Over a year ago

The best way to test an external resource like an endpoint would be to mock it. For the same, you can first format your data using a middleware - as @JatinMehrotra mentions using express.json() Testing an endpoint that used MongoDB - you can opt to use the MongoDB in-memory server

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