Different array parse behaviour of x-www-form-urlencoded between ExpressJS and rails

[hongyuanlei]

I use content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded to send POST request to backend server. The post body as follow:

listing[pictures][files][][name]=9ADDD7B1-FCFF-4538-916A-1E63DFB43A72&
listing[pictures][files][][name]=EFFE67B2-5D41-4B74-A33E-5963F54FAEC7&
listing[pictures][files][][name]=BBC9CB38-FE01-4F1A-AE37-7ED71F4B2CB5

In backend server, if I use ruby on rails, the POST will be parsed as follow:

"pictures"=>{
    "files"=>[
        {"name"=>"9ADDD7B1-FCFF-4538-916A-1E63DFB43A72"}, 
        {"name"=>"EFFE67B2-5D41-4B74-A33E-5963F54FAEC7"}, 
        {"name"=>"BBC9CB38-FE01-4F1A-AE37-7ED71F4B2CB5"}
    ]
}

This result is what I expected to be.

But, If I use nodeJS express and body-parser:

// parse application/json
app.use(bodyParser.json());
// parse application/x-www-form-urlencoded
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));

extended: true means that bodyParser will use qs to parse data.

The POST will be parsed as follow:

"pictures"=>{
    "files"=>[
        "name"=>[
            "9ADDD7B1-FCFF-4538-916A-1E63DFB43A72", 
            "EFFE67B2-5D41-4B74-A33E-5963F54FAEC7", 
            "BBC9CB38-FE01-4F1A-AE37-7ED71F4B2CB5"
        ]
    ]
}

[ljharb]

hm, that does seem wrong. What version of body-parser and thus qs are you using?

[hongyuanlei]

The version of body-parser is "1.15.2", and the version of qs is "6.2.0".

[hongyuanlei]

I install the qs of versions 6.3.0 and do the test as following:

➜  npm list -g --depth=0
├── babel-cli@6.16.0
├── dateformat@1.0.12
├── istanbul@0.4.5
├── karma-cli@1.0.1
├── lodash@4.16.4
├── newman@3.1.2
├── nodemon@1.10.2
├── npm@3.9.5
├── qs@6.3.0
├── query-string@4.2.3
├── webpack@1.13.2
└── webpack-dev-server@1.15.1

➜  node
> var qs = require("qs");
undefined
> var listing_array = qs.parse('listing[pictures][files][][name]=9ADDD7B1-FCFF-4538-916A-1E63DFB43A72&listing[pictures][files][][name]=EFFE67B2-5D41-4B74-A33E-5963F54FAEC7&listing[pictures][files][][name]=BBC9CB38-FE01-4F1A-AE37-7ED71F4B2CB5');
undefined
> JSON.stringify(listing_array);
'{"listing":{"pictures":{"files":[{"name":["9ADDD7B1-FCFF-4538-916A-1E63DFB43A72","EFFE67B2-5D41-4B74-A33E-5963F54FAEC7","BBC9CB38-FE01-4F1A-AE37-7ED71F4B2CB5"]}]}}}'
>

The result still not what I wanted.

[ljharb]

A query string of 'listing[pictures][files][0][name]=9ADDD7B1-FCFF-4538-916A-1E63DFB43A72&listing[pictures][files][1][name]=EFFE67B2-5D41-4B74-A33E-5963F54FAEC7&listing[pictures][files][2][name]=BBC9CB38-FE01-4F1A-AE37-7ED71F4B2CB5' does parse how you want - but I agree this is strange.

I believe this might be related to #122 and perhaps also #123, but I'm going to leave this open also.