Requests
IntentJS provides a useful Request class over express' Request object. It automatically parses the incoming data, headers, and comes packed with many utilities.
Interacting With The Request
Using the Request
To get the Request object, you will need to type-hint the Request class from @intentjs/core. The incoming request will automatically be injected into the controller's method.
import { Req, Request, Controller } from "@intentjs/core";@Controller()export class BookController { async create(@Req() req: Request) { const name = req.input("name"); return { msg: "Book Created Successfully!" }; }}
Request Inputs, Host, Path and Methods
The Request instance comes packed with variety of methods.
Retrieving Inputs from Payload
To retrieve input for a particular key from the Request instance, you can use input method.
const name = req.input("sportsperson");// Virat Kohli
You can also pass the second argument as the default value to the input method. If the passed key is not present inside the payload, it will return the default value.
const name = req.input("sportsperson", 'Rohit Sharma');// Rohit Sharma
If you want to get the complete payload from the req object, you can use all method, this would give you a unified object of path, query and body params.
The objects are spread in the order of path, query and body. So all the keys present in the body will be overriding the intersecting keys present in query and path params.
const inputs = req.all();
If you want to fetch a value as a string, you can use string method
const str = req.string("name");
Alternatively, if you want to fetch a value parsed as a number, you can use the number method
const num = req.number("amount");
If you would to fetch a value as a boolean, you can use the boolean method, this method returns true for all "truthy" values. It would return true for 1, "1", true, "true", "yes", "on", for all other values it would return false;
const bool = req.boolean("tncAgreed");
If you try to access values which cannot be typed by Request, it will return undefined. It doesn't throw error because it can cause errors at runtime.
Accessing Query Parameters
If you want to specifically access query parameters, you can make use of query method inside the IntentRequest object.
To access a query param, you can pass the key to the query method like below.
const query = req.query("page");
If you don't pass any argument to it, it would return all query params.
Input Presence
There can be situations where you want to just check if a particular key is present inside the payload or not. To do so, you can make use of has or hasAny method.
Using has method, you can check if a particular key is present inside the payload or not.
if (req.has("email")) { // ...}
Similarly, if you want to check if either of keys are available or not, you can pass multiple keys to the same has method. It will return true as soon as any of the passed keys are present inside the payload.
if (req.has("email", "phone")) { // ...}
Accessing the Headers
Headers are important if you are building a REST API as they provide lots of meta information which you can use in your application. Request offers useful methods for headers which you can use.
To get a header by it's key, you can use the header method
const authorization = req.header("authorization");
You can also pass the second argument as the default value to the header method. If the passed key is not present inside the payload, it will return the default value.
If you want to get all of the headers, you can use the headers method.
const headers = req.headers();
As most of the REST APIs, use JWT for authentication, Request comes with a bearerToken method to help you easily fetch the bearer token without doing the hassle of parsing the header yourself. You can use the method like below
const token = req.bearerToken();
To check if a request has a specific header, you can make use of hasHeader method.
if (req.hasHeader("authorization")) { // ...}
If you want to check for multiple headers, you can simply pass the headers to the same hasHeader method only. It will return true if any one of the header is present inside the request.
if (req.hasHeader("authroization", "cookie")) { // ...}
Playing with Content Types
Request comes with variety of methods through which you can use to fetch and check for certain content types in your application.
To check if a particular request expects JSON, you can use expectsJson method.
if (req.expectsJson()) { // ...}
To get all acceptable content types you can use getAcceptableContentTypes method.
const contentTypes = req.getAcceptableContentTypes();
To check if a request accepts certain type of content type, you can make use of accepts method.
if (req.accepts("application/xml", "application/json")) { // ...}
It would return true if any of the content type is acceptable. Otherwise, it will return false.