How to get nested form data in express.js?

Question

In Rails, if you have a form with underscores, it will assume a nested layout structure in params:

<input type="text" name="person_first" />
<input type="text" name="person_last" />

On the server, you'll get:

params #=> { person: { first: "Tom", last: "Hanks" } }

When I'm using Express.js in node.js, bodyparser doesn't seem to do the same thing. Looking at the code for bodyparser, it just runs the JSON parser on it, resulting in:

params #=> { person_first: "Tom", person_last: "Hanks" } }

Is there some way I can get the nested form data, like in Rails, when I'm using Express? Is there a library that enables me to do this?

Pier-Luc Gendreau · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-11 05:49:33Z

22

If you are using express.bodyParser you can use array notation to pass nested data.

Add express.bodyParser middleware before your controllers.

app.use(express.bodyParser());

Now you can use this notation in your html code:

<input type="text" name="person[first]" />
<input type="text" name="person[last]" />

or

<input type="text" name="person[name][first]" />
<input type="text" name="person[name][last]" />

Update for Express 4

The key here is setting extended: true

app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({
  extended: true
}));

edited Dec 11, 2014 at 5:49

Pier-Luc Gendreau

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answered Nov 16, 2012 at 22:52

Vadim Baryshev

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2 Comments

coool Over a year ago

can we have a dot notation for eg person.first or person.name.first. or is there a parser which would do that

Qasim Over a year ago

Do we have nested attributes like this in Koa2 too?

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