Good ways to work with forms in node and express

Question

Good ways to work with forms in node and express

Being new to node js and express has me wondering the best ways to get things done. Are there any specific conventions used in working with forms?

forms
node.js
express

Answer 1

I use express-validator to validate input fields.

Here's an example:

app.post('/login', routes.login.post);


//routes/login.js

exports.login.post = function(req, res){
  req.assert('username', 'Enter username').notEmpty();
  req.assert('password', 'Enter password').notEmpty();
  res.locals.err = req.validationErrors(true);

  if ( res.locals.err ) {
    if ( req.xhr ) {
      res.send(401, { err: res.locals.err });
    } else {
      res.render('login');
    }

    return;
  }

  //authenticate and set user in session here
};

Answer 2

I strongly recommend you to pass all of your forms' data via any kind of XSS attacks or other injections filter. For example, you may use node-validator

It's rather simple to use. To filter XSS injections, just write:

req.sanitize('textarea').xss();

etc. More docs can be found here: node-validator