Javascript syntax error [Node JS]

Question

Javascript syntax error [Node JS]

I am learning nodeJS and I have this syntax error which I don't understand. Can someone point out what is the syntax error, why I am getting it, and how do I bypass it?

var http = require('http');
var url = require('url');
var server = http.createServer(function(req,res) {
    if (req.method == 'POST') {
        return res.end("Only get requests");
    }
    var st = url.parse(req.url,true);
    if (st.indexOf("parsetime") > -1) {
        var time = st.substring(st.indexOf("iso"));
        var date = new Date(time);
        var out = '{
            "hour":'+date.getHours()+',
            "minute":'+date.getMinutes()+',
            "second":'+date.getSeconds()+',
        }';
        res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' });
        res.end(out);
    } else if (st.indexOf("unixtime") > -1) {
        var time = st.substring(st.indexOf("iso"));
        var date = new Date(time);
        var out = "{
            'unixtime':"+date.getTime()+"
        }";
        res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' });
        res.end(out);
    } else {
        return res.end("404");
    }
});
server.listen(process.argv[2]);

The syntax error is on line 11 : " var out = '{ "

javascript
node.js
syntax
syntax-error

Answer 1

Remove the single quotes from here:

var out = '{
    "hour":'+date.getHours()+',
    "minute":'+date.getMinutes()+',
    "second":'+date.getSeconds()+',
}';

Change the above to:

var out = {
    "hour": date.getHours(),
    "minute": date.getMinutes(),
    "second": date.getSeconds(),
};

Or if I may be mistaken for the string to contain a JSON object, you need to do declare the out that way and stringify using:

out = JSON.stringify(out);

Answer 2

The problem is that you tried to have a multi-line string, which you can't do like that in JavaScript. It is probably easier to do it like this:

var out = '{';
out+='"hour":'+date.getHours(),
out+='"minute":'+date.getMinutes(),
out+='"second":'+date.getSeconds()
out+='}';

Or, even easier, just define the object, then use JSON.stringify() to turn it into a string:

var outObj = {
    hour:date.getHours(),
    minute:date.getMinutes(),
    second:date.getSeconds()
};
var obj=JSON.stringify(outObj);

This just defines a normal object, then turns it into JSON

Answer 3

Remove quotes

 var out = {"hour":'+date.getHours()+',
        "minute":'+date.getMinutes()+',
        "second":'+date.getSeconds()+',
    };