Format of data received through ajax request?

Question

I have client side code that looks like this:

<form name="sendCoordinates" action="http://localhost:8080/geodata" method="post"> 
        <label> MinLat: </label>
        <input type="text" name="MinLat" value="0"><br>
        <label> MaxLat: </label>
        <input type="text" name="MaxLat" value="1"><br>
        <label> MinLong: </label>
        <input type="text" name="MinLong" value="0"><br>
        <label> MaxLong: </label>
        <input type="text" name="MaxLong" value="1"><br>

        <input type="submit" value="submit" id="s1">
        </form> 

<script>


        $("#sendCoordinates")
            .on('submit', function(e) {

                e.preventDefault();

                var $form    = $(e.target),
                    formData = new FormData();
                    params   = $form.serializeArray();

                $.each(params, function(i, val) {
                    formData.append(val.name, val.value);
                });

                $.ajax({
                    url: $form.attr('action'),
                    data: formData,
                    cache: false,
                    contentType: false,
                    processData: false,
                    type: 'POST',
                    success: function(result) {
                        console.log(result + "you");
                    }
                });
            });
    </script>

I am sending this form data to an endpoint /geodata .

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

My question is, under a successful post, what would console.log(req.body) print on the server side? I am unable to tell yet as my client is not sending any information yet due to some bug. This will help me write my server side code according to the data I receive in the post request.

Answer 1

Looks like you're using Express. In general practice, request bodies are parsed as JSON (see Express req.body docs ), but it depends on the parsing middleware you're using ( body-parser is the common one in Express apps).

It also depends on the Content-Type header of the request. From the Express docs I mentioned above, they give an example:

app.use(bodyParser.json()); // for parsing application/json
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true })); // for parsing application/x-www-form-urlencoded

It looks like you currently set contentType: false in your AJAX request, so that will just send raw data to your server.

To answer your question more concretely

My question is, under a successful post, what would console.log(req.body) print on the server side?

It depends on the Content-Type and what middleware (if any) you are using the parse request bodies.