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JavaScript

Posted by Zachary Harriott
Zachary Harriott
5,630 Points

Getting an empty object when trying to get profile data from Treehouse JSON

I'm working on the "Build a Simple Dynamic Website" course and am stuck at the section on routing. I have both my home and user routes built and established in a separate file from my app,js.

My set up runs fine, meaning that the functions within router.js are successfully called from app.js when the URL (https://teamtreehouse.com/[username] is passed... however, an empty object is returned from the Treehouse DB.

Here's my workspace - https://w.trhou.se/5n4r7ws58b

Any thoughts on this?

Brandon Leichty
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Brandon Leichty
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 35,193 Points

Hey Zachary,

Are you getting any error messages/console logs when you run your app? I received the message "Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 405 (Method Not Allowed)"

I got the same response in both Chrome and Safari.

3 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
243,656 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
243,656 Points

How are you running this?

I tried it with the command "node example_profile.js" and it gave me back the profile in JSON format.

Zachary Harriott
Zachary Harriott
5,630 Points

I've been using node Javascript/app.js. I changed up the directory structure when I started the project. Maybe this was a bad idea?

Brandon Leichty
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Brandon Leichty
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 35,193 Points
Brandon Leichty
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Brandon Leichty
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 35,193 Points

Hey Zachary,

I tried running your app using node Javascript/app.js. And when I go to localhost:3000 I receive this message text: 

Header
Search 
Footer

Which actually makes sense if you look at your router.js file. You're telling it to write those things when you go to the "/" route of your page. Maybe you're wanting to direct users to your index.html file when this page is visited?

Zachary Harriott
Zachary Harriott
5,630 Points

This is the expected behavior when navigating to the home route ("/").. The issue is, when I try to navigate to a user's profile I get an error.

As of right now, when I type in /[anyUsername], it should redirect the client through the user function which should log a profile object to the console. Problem is, the profile object is empty and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I think it's something obvious I'm missing but I can't seem to find it.

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
243,656 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
243,656 Points

You'll laugh when you see the issue here.

In router.js, in the callback from the "end" event, you parse a few fields from the the JSON into a values object, but then nothing is done with that object. The only thing written to the response is the string "Finishing...".

I added a little code to see the contents of the value object and they contained student data as expected.

I'm imagining the sound of a palm smacking a forehead. :laughing:

Zachary Harriott
Zachary Harriott
5,630 Points

The issue here isn't that I'm not using the data that I parse, but that there is no data returned as a result of the parsing. When I do console.dir(STUDENT_PROFILE) there is an empty Profile object which should at that point be filled with student data.

I have no idea why the object is empty.

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
243,656 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
243,656 Points

I'm not aware than an EventEmitter exposes anything interesting to see, it's just good for attaching listeners. I certainly would not expect it to contain any response data.

Your response data arrives through your parameter profileJSON, which is then used to create your values object. And the contents of that seem to be as expected.