Empty `body` and `files` request properties

I feel like I must be doing something extremely silly here, but can replicate my problem in a really simple app following your examples. Perhaps there is something really weird with my node setup.

Platform: OSX El Capitan Node Version: v5.12.0 (I’ve also nvm-ed and tried with v6.7.0, same outcome)

Expected Result: POST multipart/form-data requests with the multer middleware should add body and files properties to the request object with the data.

What happens for me: Empty req.body or req.files data from POST requests. Multer throws no errors and returns empty object and array for them respectively.

I’ve made a simple repo that shows my setup: https://github.com/jamsinclair/multer-test

My server js is literally: (I’ve tried using different api methods, .array(), .single('name'), .none() etc, still the same outcome)

var app = require('express')();
var multer = require('multer');

var upload = multer({ dest: './uploads' })

app.post('/upload', upload.any(), function (req, res, next) {
  console.log('body data:', req.body);
  console.log('files data:', req.files);
  res.sendStatus(200);
});

app.listen(9000, function () {
  console.log('Listening on port 9000');
});

Example payload being sent via Postman:

POST /upload HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:9000
Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW
Cache-Control: no-cache
Postman-Token: 40d74092-2b02-12c4-b213-6ecd515ff61f

------WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="foo"

bar
------WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW
Content-Disposition: form-data; name="name"

multer
------WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW--

[serhiipalash]

I ended up using solution from @wcandillon article https://medium.com/@wcandillon/uploading-images-to-firebase-with-expo-a913c9f8e98d

const cors = require('cors')
const bodyParser = require('body-parser')
const Busboy = require('busboy')
const getRawBody = require('raw-body')
const contentType = require('content-type')

app.post(
  '/post-tweet',
  [
    // middlewares

    cors({ origin: true }),

    bodyParser.json(),

    bodyParser.urlencoded({
      extended: true,
    }),

    (req, res, next) => {
      if (
        req.rawBody === undefined &&
        req.method === 'POST' &&
        req.headers['content-type'].startsWith('multipart/form-data')
      ) {
        getRawBody(
          req,
          {
            length: req.headers['content-length'],
            limit: '10mb',
            encoding: contentType.parse(req).parameters.charset,
          },
          function(err, string) {
            if (err) return next(err)
            req.rawBody = string
            next()
          }
        )
      } else {
        next()
      }
    },

    (req, res, next) => {
      if (
        req.method === 'POST' &&
        req.headers['content-type'].startsWith('multipart/form-data')
      ) {
        const busboy = new Busboy({
          headers: req.headers,
        })

        var fileBuffer = new Buffer('')

        busboy.on('file', (fieldname, file, filename, encoding, mimetype) => {
          file.on('data', data => {
            fileBuffer = Buffer.concat([fileBuffer, data])
          })

          file.on('end', () => {
            const file_object = {
              fieldname,
              originalname: filename,
              encoding,
              mimetype,
              buffer: fileBuffer,
            }

            req.file = file_object
          })
        })

        req.data = {}

        busboy.on('field', function(
          fieldname,
          val
          // fieldnameTruncated
          // valTruncated
          // encoding
          // mimetype
        ) {
          req.data[fieldname] = val
        })

        busboy.on('finish', function() {
          console.log('Done parsing form!')

          next()
        })

        busboy.end(req.rawBody)
      } else {
        next()
      }
    },
  ],
  function(req, res, next) {
    // request handler
    const file = req.file

    console.log(file)
  }
)

It will be much simpler to just use one middleware, but it doesn’t work in Firebase cloud 😦

var multer = require('multer');
var upload = multer({ dest: './uploads' })

app.post(
  '/post-tweet',
  upload.single('photo'),
  function(req, res, next) {
    // request handler
    const file = req.file

    console.log(file)
  }
)

[jamsinclair]

After much digging around finally stumbled upon my answers here http://stackoverflow.com/a/10765244/5179940

• The body data for the multipart/form-data requests must end with CLRF(\r\n) line endings.

• The body data boundaries have an extra -- prepended For example, The header with boundary defined:

  Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=--123456
  

  Note how the body data boundaries have an extra -- prepended Body Data:

  ----123456
  Content-Disposition: form-data; name="foo"
  
  Bar
  ----123456--
  

Issue resolved for myself.