Multer image upload in Nodejs and Express

Question

I've been trying for days to upload an image using Multer. This is how far I got. I tried multiple things, and can't seem to make it work. I don't know how to use Multer to upload an image in my createUser function in the format shown below.

My ' server.js ' file:

var express = require('express');
var multer = require('multer');
var upload = multer({dest: 'uploads/'});
var router = require('./app/routes');
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
var session = require('client-sessions');
var DB_URI = "mongodb://localhost:27017/portfolio";
var app = express();
var path = require('path');
var fs = require('fs');
app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({extended:false}));
app.use(express.static(__dirname+ '/public'));
app.use(session({
  cookieName: 'session',
  secret: 'random_string_goes_here',
  duration: 30 * 60 * 1000,
  activeDuration: 5 * 60 * 1000,
}));

mongoose.connect(DB_URI);
app.use(router);

app.listen(8080, function(){
    console.log("server is listening on port 8080");
})

My ' routes.js '

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();
var projectController = require('./controllers/projectController');
var userController = require('./controllers/userController');
router.post('/regUser', userController.createUser);

My ' index.ejs '

<form class="form inv" method="POST" action="/regUser" id="reg_form">
          <h3 style="margin-bottom:40px;">Register</h3>
          <!-- <input type="file" name="file"/> -->
          <input type="text" class="form-control" name="name" placeholder="Name"/>
          <input type="text" class="form-control" name="username" placeholder="Username"/>
          <input type="text" class="form-control" name="email" placeholder="Email"/>
          <input type="password" class="form-control" name="password" placeholder="Password"/>
          <input type="file" name="userPhoto"/>
          <input type="submit" class="btn btn-default" value="Submit"/>
        </form>

My userController.js

createUser: function(req, res){
//add code to create user AND upload image
}

Answer 1

There are two problems.

First : your form does not have the enctype attribute set. enctype="multipart/form-data" is required for file submission to work.

Second : you require multer, but you are not using it. Add this

app.use(multer({ dest: '/tmp/'}).single('userPhoto'))

(or with another method (see documentation), like .array() or .fields())

You could then access the file in createUser() like this:

createUser: function(req, res){
    console.log(req.file); // this displays the userPhoto's properties
    fs.readFile(req.file.path, function (err, data) {
        // do something with the file data
    }
}