Is it possible to do the validation in a separate file and not inline in the route?

I am using express-validator to validate the Request body. I wanted to abstract validation in a separate JS partial/import and not have it inline in my routes.

Here’s what I created:

// routes

const controller = require('../controllers/auth.controller');
const validate = require('../validations/auth.validation');
router.route('/register')
  .post(validate.register, controller.register);


/**** auth.validation.js *****/

const { check, validationResult } = require('express-validator/check');

exports.register = (req, res, next) => {
  check('email').isEmail().withMessage('must be a valid email');
  const errors = validationResult(req);
  if (!errors.isEmpty()) {
    return res.status(422).json({ errors: errors.mapped() });
  }
  return next();
};

I get

RangeError: Invalid status code: undefined
    at ServerResponse.writeHead (_http_server.js:188:11)

[gustavohenke]

Hey @gkatsanos, The correct way to use express-validator would be to use it as a middleware when defining your express routes, eg:

// auth.validation.js
exports.register = [
  check('email').isEmail(),
  (req, res, next) => { /* the rest of the existing function */ }
];

…otherwise, the validations will never run.

Also, you may be doing something wrong inside your routes, as Node’s http module is complaining about an undefined status code. This is unrelated to express-validator, so I recommend you to use StackOverflow in case you need more help finding the issue.

[gkatsanos]

Thank you 😃 indeed the array then looks much much better!:

exports.register = [
  check('email').isEmail().withMessage('must be a valid email'),
  check('password').isLength({ min: 4 }).withMessage('passwd 4 chars long!'),
];