Problem displaying JSON

Question

Hey guys,

I am currently doing the Express Basics course and going really well but I can't seem to get my JSON working although I went to the GItHub repo for the course and copy and pasted in the JSON and still no luck.

Here is my app.js

    'use strict';//throws an error if there is any typos

    var express = require('express'),
    posts = require('./mock/posts.json');

    //express function() is a top level function created by the module
    var app = express();//app is now extended and altered

    app.set('view engine', 'jade');//tells express our view engine
    app.set('views', __dirname + '/templates');//tells express where our templates are
    //create a route
    app.get('/', function(req, res){
    res.render('index');
    });
    //route with a parameter
    app.get('/blog/:title?', function(req, res){
    var title = req.params.title;
    if(title == undefined)
    {
        res.status(503);//503 tells search engines the page is under construction
        res.send("This page is under construction");
    }
    else
    {
        var post = posts[title];
        res.render('post', {post: post});
    }
    });

    //blog test route
    app.get('/test', function(req, res){
    res.json(posts);
    });


    //set up dev server
    app.listen(3000, function(){
    console.log("The frontend server is running on port 3000")
    });

Here is my JSON:

{
  "I like to run!": {
    "title": "I like to run!",
    "description": "Fanny pack vinyl put a bird on it, small batch viral migas 8-bit meditation Shoreditch keytar health goth bespoke sustainable. Viral you probably haven't heard of them try-hard ennui, pug Thundercats selfies. Normcore cray health goth, umami ennui beard art party skateboard squid distillery."
  },
  "Crossfit is Cool": {
    "title": "Crossfit is Cool",
    "description": "Fanny pack vinyl put a bird on it, small batch viral migas 8-bit meditation Shoreditch keytar health goth bespoke sustainable. Viral you probably haven't heard of them try-hard ennui, pug Thundercats selfies. Normcore cray health goth, umami ennui beard art party skateboard squid distillery."
  },
  "Swimming is great for the joints": {
    "title": "Swimming is great for the joints",
    "description": "Fanny pack vinyl put a bird on it, small batch viral migas 8-bit meditation Shoreditch keytar health goth bespoke sustainable. Viral you probably haven't heard of them try-hard ennui, pug Thundercats selfies. Normcore cray health goth, umami ennui beard art party skateboard squid distillery."
  } 
}

The output of my JSON on the browser is not formatted, it basically just outputs as is so I cannot use parameters to filter the information as it just sees it as a file of text.

Any help would be great.

Thanks.

Answer 1 · 2015-10-25T06:10:03Z

October 25, 2015 6:10am

Hey there!

That's actually the expected response. If you use Chrome, you can use an extension called JSONView (located in the Chrome store here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jsonview/chklaanhfefbnpoihckbnefhakgolnmc?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog)

It helpfully formats your JSON so you can look at what's there.

You can also copy and paste it into something like http://jsonprettyprint.com/ (as suggested by Andrew in a previous course) to get a nicely printed version of your JSON. This is helpful if you don't like using browser plugins and still want to see your JSON formatted nicely.

There are a few other things to mention if you're interested:

In the new version of Node, it's better to include status codes in your responses as well. So, when you send the JSON response, do something like this: res.status(200).json(posts);

I would suggest that you change your conditional in the if statement in the get route to a single post (around line 16) to something like this:

if(typeof title === 'text') {
    // success
} else {
    // error
}

As a practice, it's better to look for what your code should be rather than what it shouldn't be. This way, you don't get something unexpected like a null value that would pass the condition you currently have.

Hope this helps!

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