How to send a POST request with Content-Type "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" - rest

Question

I am trying to send a POST request from my TornadoFX application to my nodejs server.
That's how i send my request to the server:
val api: Rest by inject()
api.baseURI = "http://localhost:5000/"
api.post("api/register", userModel) {
it.addHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")
}
My UserModel looks like this:
class UserModel : JsonModel {
val nameProperty = SimpleStringProperty("")
var name by nameProperty
val emailProperty = SimpleStringProperty("")
var email by emailProperty
override fun toJSON(json: JsonBuilder) {
with(json) {
add("name", name)
add("email", email)
}
}
}
Printing the request body on my node server i get following:
[Object: null prototype] {
'{"name":"Test","email":"test#test.org"}': ''
}
When i send a request via Postman i get the following body:
[Object: null prototype] {
name: 'Test',
email: 'test#test.org'
}
And that's what i'm trying to produce with TornadoFX without success.
I am grateful for any help!

Answer 1

You are correctly setting the Content-Type header, but you're pushing a JsonModel as your data, and consequently the framework will convert it to a JSON structure by calling toJSON() on it. The application/x-www-form-urlencoded content type expects an URL encoded piece of data, so you need to convert your data into an url encoded string. I suggest adding a function to your domain model like this:
fun toURLEncoded() =
"name=${name.urlEncoded}&email=${email.urlEncoded}".byteInputStream(StandardCharsets.UTF_8)
This example uses an extension function called urlEncoded to avoid clutter. You can define that extension function like this for example:
fun Any.urlEncoded(): String = URLEncoder.encode(toString(), "UTF-8")
Now you just have to call api.post("api/register", userModel.toURLEncoded()) and you should be good to go.