PUT request not working for changing user password in Express.js with mongoose

Question

I'm currently working on an Express.js application where I have an endpoint for changing a user's password. The endpoint works perfectly fine when using a POST request, but it doesn't work when I switch to a PUT request. I'm not sure what could be causing this issue. I am getting in postman a "500 - Internal server Error"

Here's my code:

// Route definition
router.post("/change-password", userController.changePassword);

When I change the above code to use router.put instead of router.post, the request doesn't work anymore. I've checked that the request method is indeed set to PUT, and I'm sending the request to the correct URL (/user/change-password).

// Change a user's password
const changePassword = async (req, res) => {
  // Get the token from the request headers
  const token = req.headers.authorization;
  if (!token) {
    return res.status(401).json({ message: "No token provided." });
  }

  // JSON from the request body
  const { oldPassword, newPassword } = req.body;

  try {
    // Verify the token and extract the payload
    const decoded = verifyToken(token);
    const { _id } = decoded;

    // Find the user by id
    const user = await User.findById(_id);
    if (!user) {
      return res.status(404).json({ error: "User not found" });
    }

    // Check if the password is correct
    const isPasswordValid = await user.comparePassword(oldPassword);
    if (!isPasswordValid) {
      return res.status(401).json({ message: "Invalid credentials." });
    }

    // Update the user's password
    user.password = newPassword; // Password hashing is done in the User model
    await user.save();

    return res.status(200).json({ message: "Password changed successfully." });
  } catch (error) {
    res.status(500).json({ error: "Internal server error" });
  }
};

I'm using Express.js version 4.18.2 and testing the endpoint using tools like Postman.

I'm not sure what could be causing this issue or if there's anything specific that needs to be configured differently for PUT requests in Express.js. Any insights or suggestions on how to troubleshoot this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

I have found a solution to my problem. It turns out that the URL from my endpoint created the problem. The problem was that the URL required a prefix with a parameter for a PUT request. In my case, my PUT request was structured as follows:

router.put("/change-password", userController.changePassword);

After adding the prefix "/:id", Express.js no longer threw an error. The new URL looks like this:

router.put("/change-password/:id", userController.changePassword);

I hope this answer can help some of you. Special thanks to for the comment, helping me to debug and lern Express.js!