Trouble moving data from POST to GET - Node/Express

Question

Pretty new to node/express, working on a weather app that takes in a location from a form to post

<form method="POST" action="/">
  <input id="input" type="text" name="city" placeholder="Search by name or zip code" />
  <button id="button" type="submit"></button>
</form>

I'm able to get the data in the server code, but i need to transfer it to my app.get to use in my API call.

app.post("/", function(req, res) {
  let input = req.body.city;
  console.log(input);
});

app.get("/", function(req, res) {
  const url = `https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=${cityName}&units=imperial&appid=${apiKey}`;

  ..
  code
  ..

  res.render("index", weather_data);
});

Answer 1

You need to change your form method to GET (or omit method attribute, GET is default method). So when you submit your form request goes to this route

app.get("/", function(req, res) {
  const cityName = req.query.city; // see http://expressjs.com/en/5x/api.html#req.query
  const url = `https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=${cityName}&units=imperial&appid=${apiKey}`;

  ..
  code
  ..

  res.render("index", weather_data);
});

This route app.post("/",...) can be removed.

Answer 2

If I understood right, You want to send some sort of data to your server using a post request, then retrieve it using a get request right? In that case, you need a database in order to store your data at first. So you send your data to the server -> store it in the database -> retrieve data from database using a get request.

You can use both SQL or NoSQL databases. I suggest you use MongoDB with mongoose module.