Post form data with axios in Node.js

Question

I\'m testing out the Uber API on Postman, and I\'m able to send a request with form data successfully. When I try to translate this request using Node.js and the axios library I

Answer 1

From the error it seems your client_id or client_secret is incorrect. Enable debugging and share the raw request/response (after filtering credentials out).

Answer 2

You might be able to use Content-Type: 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'. I ran into a similar issue with https://login.microsoftonline.com where it was unable to handle incoming application/json.

var axios = require("axios");

axios({
  url: 'https://login.uber.com/oauth/v2/token',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },
  data: `client_id=${encodeURIComponent('**')}&client_secret=${encodeURIComponent('**')}&grant_type=authorization_code&redirect_uri=${encodeURIComponent('http://localhost:8080/')}&code=${encodeURIComponent('**')}`
})
.then(function(response) {
  console.log(response.data)
})
.catch(function(error) {
  console.log(error)
})

You could also use a function to handle the translation to formUrlEncoded like so

const formUrlEncoded = x =>
   Object.keys(x).reduce((p, c) => p + `&${c}=${encodeURIComponent(x[c])}`, '')

var axios = require("axios");

axios({
  url: 'https://login.uber.com/oauth/v2/token',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },
  data: formUrlEncoded({
     client_id: '***',
     client_secret: '***',
     grant_type: 'authorization_code',
     redirect_uri: 'http://localhost:8080/',
     code: '***' 
  })
})
.then(function(response) {
  console.log(response.data)
})
.catch(function(error) {
  console.log(error)
})

Answer 3

It is not true! You can post data with axios using nodejs. I have done it. The problem is, if you use PHP on the server side, there is a pitfall you need to be aware of. Axios posts data in JSON format (Content-Type: application/json) PHP's standard $_POST array is not populated when this content type is used. So it will always be empty. In order to get post parameters sent via a json request, you need to use file_get_contents("http://php://input") .

A simple PHP script on the server side would be:

if($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']==='POST' && empty($_POST)) {
 $_POST = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://php://input'));
}

Using this method you can avoid the formData dependency. You CAN post data directly from node.js.

Answer 4

As for 10 June 2017, axios library does not support posting form data in Node.js. Here is the issue on GitHub - https://github.com/mzabriskie/axios/issues/789

We had the similar problem and decided to switch to request library.