Post form data to a flow

Problem

You want to post form data in to a flow.

Solution

Use the HTTP In node to listen for POST requests that have their Content-Type set to application/x-www-form-urlencoded and access the form data as properties of msg.payload.

Example

[~]$ curl -X POST -d "name=Nick" http://localhost:1880/hello-form
<html>
    <head></head>
    <body>
        <h1>Hello Nick!</h1>
    </body>
</html>

Discussion

HTML Forms can be used to send data from the browser back to a server. If configured to POST the data, the browser will encode the data held in the <form> using a content-type of application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

For example, when a form that looks like this is submitted:

<form action="http://localhost:1880/hello-form" method="post">
  <input name="name" value="Nick">
  <button>Say hello</button>
</form>

it results in the request:

POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:1880
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 9

name=Nick

When the HTTP In node receives such a request, it parses the body of the request and makes the form data available under msg.payload:

var name = msg.payload.name;