How can I use body-parser with LoopBack?

Question

I see that LoopBack has the Express 3.x middleware built-in. Indeed, body-parser is in loopback/node_modules. But I cannot figure out how to use it as middlewar

Answer 1

In Loopback ^3.22.0, I can suffice by adding the

"parse": {
    "body-parser#json": {}
  },

to the server/middleware.json in order to consume application/json post bodies in the server/boot/routes.js

module.exports = function(app) {
  app.post('/api/sayhello', function(req, res, next) {
     console.log(req.body)

Answer 2

I'm posting this just for informational purposes. I ran into this same issue and found this works as well. You can add a file in the server/boot/ directory with the following:

var bodyParser = require('body-parser');

module.exports = function(app) {
  app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
}

Of course, you have to install the package by running:

npm install --save body-parser

That will save the package under the node_modules directory. If you want it to be the first thing to run, you can start the file name with a "0" since these are loaded in alphabetical order.

That being said, I figure it is more 'correct' and elegant to use the middleware configuration approach mentioned above than this one, but I share it in the event someone else finds it useful.