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Remember when we wrote out first route
by hand and had to use a request and

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response object for the route handler.

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We've been using the response object
to return a response to the client.

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But we haven't been using the request
object yet, apart from declaring it.

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Let's look at the express
documentation for the request object.

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There are quite a few properties
that you can access on the request.

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The one we're most interested
in is the body property.

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This is where our form
response will end up.

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Notice though,
that by default it is undefined.

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To put the form responses into the body,
we'll need what is called Middleware.

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Middleware is basically some code that
fits in the middle of a request or

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a response.

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Middleware does something
to the incoming data and

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hands the result of to
the rest of your application.

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We'll look more deeply at
Middleware later in this course.

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But we don't really need
to know a lot about it yet.

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I will show you how to install
some middleware in a moment.

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First, though,

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let's use the console to take a look
at the request object more closely.

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In the app.js file,

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I'll add a line in the post route to print
out the request object to the console.

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I'll save it and then go back to
the browser to create a new request.

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Our code will run.

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I don't need a name right now,
and I'll click on Submit.

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Moving to the console
where Express is running,

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you can see that the request object
includes a lot of information.

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We will look too closely at the request.

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I just wanted you to
get an appreciation for

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the amount of work expressed as to
simplify our job as developers.

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Most of the time,
we don't need many of these properties.

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We'll just access a select few.

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I'll clear this screen, and
then we'll switch back to the app.js file.

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I'm just going to examine
the body property now.

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If I submit the form now using my name And
switch to the console,

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as you can see, I get undefined,
just as the documents promised.

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Let's install the middleware,
called for by the docs.

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It's called body parser and it will
process the incoming form submission data

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into a format that's easier for
our program to read.

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I'll go to the terminal and
then I'll type,

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npm install body-parser.

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When that's done, I can require
it in my app.js file at the top.

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Now, we'll tell Express to use it.

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Body-parser contains several parses, the
different ways the clients can send data.

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HTML forms normally encode the data
they send the same way URLs do.

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So, we'll need to use
the urlencode parser.

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We'll pass in an object, turning

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off the parser's extended option.

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Don´t worry too much
about this line of code.

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To be honest,

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I have to look this up everytime I need
to include it in my Express applications.

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I've included more information
about how forms and data and

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how body-parser works
in the teacher's notes.

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Now, let's submit a name.

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In the console, you can see the body
property has now a username property.

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Our app is now able to understand the
information it's getting from our form.

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Next, we'll use that information to send
something meaningful back to the client.

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While we do this, let's take a closer look
at the response objects in the next video.