Testing Express POST on Heroku with Postman

Question

Problem: When I use Postman to test a user creation POST endpoint, either of the following errors occur.

• "Error error: column "test2" does not exist
• "Cannot Post "

Considerations:

• I am able to successfully perform GET requests using Postman

• Postman seems to default parameter entry to URI?paramName=paramValue&...&paramNameN=paramvalueN

• Most of the express documentation I see displays param passing as URI/paramValue/.../paramValueN

• I have tried both notations but still can't get a successful call

Postman URIs attempted

[URI]/api/v1/users/test2@gmail.com/test/test

• Error: "Error error: column "test2" does not exist

[URI]/api/v1/users?email=test2@gmail.com&firstName=test&lastName=test

• Error: "Cannot Post "

Code:

app.post('/api/v1/users/:email/:firstName/:lastName', async(req, res) => {
try {
    const client =  await pool.connect();
    const result =  await client.query(
        `INSERT INTO users(id, email, first_name, last_name, created_date, last_session) VALUES (DEFAULT, ${req.params.email}, ${req.params.firstName}, ${req.params.lastName}, 'now()', 'now()') RETURNING *;`);
    const results = { 'results': (result) ? result.rows : null};
    res.json(results);
    client.release();
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(err);
    res.send("Error " + err);
  }})

Stack: Node, Express, Postgres, Heroku (hobby plan), Postman

Answer 1

The issue turned out to be with the parsing of the params passed into the URL. I instead performed the following:

• Changed code to accept the body of the request using bodyParser
• Storing params from the request in a local variable
• Including adding single quotes around the ${] --> '${}'

I am now able to write to the DB with the Body's contents.

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
app.use(express.json());
const { Pool } = require('pg');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({extended: true}));
const User = require('./userClass.js');

const pool = new Pool({
  connectionString: process.env.DATABASE_URL,
  ssl: {
    rejectUnauthorized: false
  }
});

/******* POST *******/
app.post('/api/v1/users', async(req, res) => {
    let newUser = new User(req.body.email, req.body.firstName, req.body.lastName);
    try {
        const client =  await pool.connect();
        const result =  await client.query(`INSERT INTO users(id, email, first_name, last_name, created_date, last_session) VALUES (DEFAULT, '${newUser.email}', '${newUser.firstName}', '${newUser.lastName}', 'now()', 'now()') RETURNING *;`);
        const results = { 'results': (result) ? result.rows : null};
        res.json(results);
        client.release();
      } catch (err) {
        console.error(err);
        res.send("Error " + err);
      }
})