CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptnode.jsexpress
swhizzle
swhizzle

Reputation: 141

Getting form name in a POST request Express JS (using EJS)

So I'm new to Node and Express and I am trying to build a simple voting app. What I would like to do is get the answer (either answer1 or answer2) and then update my database to increment the answer1(2)_votes by one.

However, before I can think about implementing this I need to be able to identify which question the user is answering.

At the moment I access the questions collection, render the index.ejs and send the result object in the render function, I then loop with ejs to display the questions and options from the database:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <title>Voting App</title>
</head>
<body>

<% for(var i = 0; i < result.length; i++) { %>
  <form action="/submit-answer"  method="POST" id=<%= result[i].question %>>
    <div id="question"><%= result[i].question %></div>
    <input type="checkbox" name="answer1">
    <label for="answer1"><%= result[i].answer1 %></label>
    <input type="checkbox" name="answer2">
    <label for="answer2"><%= result[i].answer2 %></label>
    <button type="submit">Submit</button>
  </form>

<%}%>

</form>
</body>
</html>

I then get the data from the form like so (using body-parser)

app.post("/submit-answer", (req, res) => {
    console.log(req.body);
    res.redirect("/");
})

The only issue is this will return only the checkbox data (answer1: on or answer2: on). I need the result[i].question data as well (or any way of identifying the question) so I can find which question the form is responding to increment the amount of votes for the question.

How would I go about doing this? Am I approaching this completely wrong?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2232

Answers (1)

rsp
rsp

Reputation: 111298

Unfortunately the answer to your question is: You cannot do it.

The form name is not sent in a POST request. Only the names (and values) or form elements are sent. So the only thing that you can access on the backend is the elements of the form, not the form name, unfortunately.

For more info, see this article on Mozilla Developer Network:

and those articles on Wikipedia:

Upvotes: 2

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