How to read BSON data in Express.js with body parser

Question

I have a Node.js API using Express.js with body parser which receives a BSON binary file from a python client.

Python client code:

data = bson.BSON.encode({
    "some_meta_data": 12,
    "binary_data": binary_data
})
headers = {'content-type': 'application/octet-stream'}
response = requests.put(endpoint_url, headers=headers, data=data)

Now I have an endpoint in my Node.js API where I want to deserialize the BSON data as explained in the documentation: https://www.npmjs.com/package/bson. What I am struggling with is how to get the binary BSON file from the request.

Here is the API endpoint:

exports.updateBinary = function(req, res){
    // How to get the binary data which bson deserializes from the req?
    let bson = new BSON();
    let data = bson.deserialize(???);
    ...
}

Answer 1

You'll want to use https://www.npmjs.com/package/raw-body to grab the raw contents of the body.

And then pass the Buffer object to bson.deserialize(..). Quick dirty example below:

const getRawBody = require("raw-body");

app.use(async (req, res, next) => {
    if (req.headers["content-type"] === "application/octet-stream") {
        req.body = await getRawBody(req)
    }
    next()
})

Then just simply do:

exports.updateBinary = (req, res) => {
    const data = new BSON().deserialize(req.body)
}