Return body of website with Node.js and show it using jQuery

Question

Return body of website with Node.js and show it using jQuery

I am trying to do something the following:

Have an endpoint in Express.js called /content.json. When I call that endpoint, I want to show the HTML in a label.

I have the following server code:

var http = require('http');
var express = require('express');
var request = require("request");

var app = express();
var port = 4000;

app.listen(port);
console.log('Listening on port',port);


app.use("/assets",express.static(__dirname+ '/assets'));


app.get('/content.json',function(req,res) {
    request("http://www.google.com", function(error, response, body) {
        res.data = body;
    });
});

I have the following client code:

<input type="button" text="Get content" id="googleBtn" value="Get google" />    

    <label id="contentLbl" />

     <script>

        $('#googleBtn').click(function() {
            $.ajax({
                url: '/content.json',
                type: 'GET',
                contentType: 'application/json',
                success: function(jsonData) {
                    $('#contentLbl').text(jsonData.data);
                }
            });
        });
     </script>

But it seems the request is empty in my js console.

How do I modify server/client to get the HTML of Google.com in my label? :)

Disclaimer: totally newb to Node.js

jquery
node.js
express

Answer 1

You need to send the data out from the server code:

app.get('/content.json',function(req, res) {
    request("http://www.google.com", function(error, response, body) { 
        res.send(body);
    });
});

Edit: As the JS client is expecting appication/json, you should set the response header sent from server as well:

res
    .header('Content-Type', 'application/json')
    .send(body);