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JavaScript User Authentication With Express and Mongo User Registration Adding Data to the Database

Posted by Lauren Haygood
Lauren Haygood
16,901 Points

Getting the wrong error message on POST.

Problem: When I post the user sign up form, it always triggers the first else statement, which means it doesn't think all the required fields are there, even when they are. I confirmed that they are being submitted in the Chrome dev tools by inspecting the network call and sure enough, all the fields are being submitted.

Code: 

      // register form
      form(method='POST' action='/api/register')
        div.form-group
          label(for='name') Name:
          input#name.form-control(type='text', placeholder='first and last' name='name')
        div.form-group
          label(for='email') Email:
          input#email.form-control(type='email', placeholder='name@email.com' name='email')
        div.form-group
          label(for='favoriteBook') Favorite Book:
          input#favoriteBook.form-control(type='text', placeholder='title of book' name='favoriteBook')
        div.form-group
          label(for='pw') Password:
          input#pw.form-control(type='password' name='password')
        div.form-group
          label(for='pw2') Confirm Password:
          input#pw2.form-control(type='password' name='confirmPassword')
        button.btn.btn-primary(type='submit') Sign up

// POST /register
router.post('/register', function(req, res, next) {
  if (req.body.email &&
    req.body.name &&
    req.body.favoriteBook &&
    req.body.password &&
    req.body.confirmPassword) {

      // confirm that user typed same password twice
      if (req.body.password !== req.body.confirmPassword) {
        var err = new Error('Passwords do not match.');
        err.status = 400;
        return next(err);
      }

      // create object with form input
      var userData = {
        email: req.body.email,
        name: req.body.name,
        favoriteBook: req.body.favoriteBook,
        password: req.body.password
      };

      // use schema's `create` method to insert document into Mongo
      User.create(userData, function (error, user) {
        if (error) {
          return next(error);
        } else {
          return res.redirect('/profile');
        }
      });

    } else {
      var err = new Error('All fields required.');
      err.status = 400;
      return next(err);
    }
});

So, this route has two nested IF blocks, minus the code for adding it to Mongodb. For some reason it always gets caught in the first else block no matter what I submit. Any ideas why?

2 Answers

Lauren Haygood
Lauren Haygood
16,901 Points

The issue was in my server.js file. The req.body was always blank because it didn't have these lines in the file: 

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

So, it wasn't parsing the form data properly.

Thomas Nilsen
Thomas Nilsen
14,957 Points
Thomas Nilsen
Thomas Nilsen
14,957 Points

console log out everything as the first thing you do in the POST request. Some of them is probably null or undefined due to some minor misspell I'm guessing.

console.log([req.body.email,
req.body.name,
req.body.favoriteBook,
req.body.password,
req.body.confirmPassword]);