Supporting POST in grunt-serve using connect-rest?

Question

I'm trying to use grunt serve with the connect-rest middleware. I tried to configure connect-rest in my Gruntfile.js which worked for GET requests, but not for POST. I wonder what I'm missing out. This is my Gruntfile.js (excerpt):

module.exports = function (grunt) {

       var postResponder = function(request, content, callback) {
           callback(null, {Status : 42});
       }

        var Rest = require('connect-rest');
        var rest = Rest.create( {context: '/'} );
        rest.assign(['get'],'/*', postResponder);

...

livereload: {
    options: {
      open: true,
      middleware: function (connect) {
        return [
          connect().use(rest.processRequest()),
          connect.static('.tmp'),
          connect().use('/bower_components', connect.static('./bower_components')),
          connect().use('/app/styles', connect.static('./app/styles')),
          connect.static(appConfig.app)
        ];
      }
    }
  },

That works like a charm. But when I change that one line to:

        rest.assign(['post'],'/*', postResponder);

or

        rest.assign('*','/*', postResponder);

Then on posting I get the following entry in the log (running grunt --debug):

[D] server POST /api/groups.json?cache=false&force=true&requesttime=2015-10-29T06:46:24.443Z 404 103 - 2.027 ms

and a 404 error when posting (get works).

What do I miss?

Answer 1

It turned out, that for my purpose - being able to support post of JSON as a mock I didn't need connect-rest in the first place. The build in capabilities of connect provided all I needed. So the start of the Gruntfile.js now looks like this:

    module.exports = function (grunt) { 
           var bodyParser = require("body-parser");
           var postResponder = function(request, response, next) {
               if (request.method === 'POST') {
                   console.log(request.method+" "+request.url);
                   response.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json');
                   response.statusCode = 200;
                   response.end(JSON.stringify(request.body));
               } else {
                   next();
               }
            };

and the livereload section like this:

      livereload: {
        options: {
          open: true,
          middleware: function (connect) {
            return [
              connect().use('/api', bodyParser.json()),
              connect().use('/api', postResponder),
              connect.static('.tmp'),
              connect().use('/bower_components',
                             connect.static('./bower_components')),
              connect().use('/app/styles', connect.static('./app/styles')),
              connect.static(appConfig.app)
            ];
          }
        }
      }

Note: I limit postbacks to calls to /api here - you might need different endpoints. The example simply echos back the JSON received.