Express server sending multipart form data with text fields to an external api

Question

I am creating a rest API server in Express.js. The goal of this of my particular issue is creating a post route that takes multipart/form-data request and sends file/text/field to an external API. At the moment I am running into an issue even trying to test it with postman.

I can send a response with the parsed data from multer, but when I try to create a new form-data I cannot access the request body, TypeError: Cannot read property 'name' of null

What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way? Open to suggestions.

My server code is as follows:

const express = require("express");
const bodyParser = require("body-parser");
const cors = require("cors");
const request = require("request");
const multer = require("multer");
const upload = multer({ dest: 'uploads/'});
const FormData = require("form-data");
const fs = require("fs");

const app = express();
const port = 3000;

app.use(cors());

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

///.....

app.post('/jobs/:id', upload.single('resume'), (req, res) => {

    let url = '...';

    var header = req.headers['content-type']

    var tmp_path = req.file.path;
    var tar_path = 'uploads/' + req.file.originalname;
    var src = fs.createReadStream(tmp_path);
    var dest = fs.createWriteStream(tar_path);
    src.pipe(dest);

    var data = new FormData();
    data.append('name', req.body.name)
    data.append('phone', req.body.phone)
    data.append('email', req.body.email)
    data.append('resume', fs.createReadStream(tar_path))
    
    const options = {
        url: url,
        method: 'POST',
        headers:{
            'Content-Type': header
        },
        formData: data
    }

    request(options, (err, rez, body) => {
        if (err){
            console.log("There was an error: " + err)
        }
    }).pipe(res)  

    res.send(res)
})


app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Server is listening on port ${port}`));

EDIT

This is the request I am trying to make:

curl -F name="test" -F phone="0000000000" -F email="[email protected]" -F resume=@"Desktop/test.txt" http://cfr.thewb.co/jobs/408189/

Can you add the actual request you're trying to do? Maybe as a curl? — eol
– eol, Commented Jul 31, 2020 at 16:08
I would guess that the issue comes from mixing body-parser and multer at the same time, but I haven't tested it. Does it work if you remove body parser? Multer should return the text-based form data. — garrettmills
– garrettmills, Commented Jul 31, 2020 at 16:50
Try replacing "upload.single('...')" with "upload.any()". I believe multer is only doing the file field, not the text fields, when you set single. — garrettmills
– garrettmills, Commented Jul 31, 2020 at 17:09

Jon Luke · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-04 14:09:01Z

So, after much digging and playing around I was finally able to figure it out. There are couple of things that I needed to fix.

Still not sure as to why it didnt work, but I removed the new FormData() function altogether and turned it into an Object.
I had to remove .pipe() call as it was giving me a circular structure error.
and lastly in my options I need quotes around "formData" for my request.

Here is the cleaned up code:

app.post('/jobs/:id', upload.single('resume'), (req, res, next) => {

    let url = '...';

    var header = req.headers['content-type'];

    function newObj(name,phone,email,resume){
        return{
            name: name,
            phone: phone,
            email: email,
            resume: {
                value: resume.buffer,
                options: resume.originalname
            }
        }
    }
    
    const options = {
        url: url,
        method: 'POST',
        headers:{
            'Content-Type': header
        },
        "formData": newObj(req.body.name,req.body.phone,req.body.email,req.file),
        'auth': {
            'username': PASS,
            'password': KEY,
        }
    }

    request(options, (err, rez, body) => {
        if (err){
            res.send(err)
        }
        if(rez){
            res.send(rez)
        }
    })
    
})

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Express server sending multipart form data with text fields to an external api

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