I mentioned how we can inspect the request object in any request coming in to the server using c.req

The Request object holds all the HTTP request information.

Typically you have 4 kinds of request body types:

• text/plain
• application/json
• application/x-www-form-urlencoded
• multipart/form-data (when uploading files)

In a simple text request you can retrieve the request body using await c.req.text()

app.post('/', async c => { 
  const body = await c.req.text()
})

If the request body is JSON, use await c.req.json() to parse the JSON body content in an object:

app.post('/', async c => { 
  const body = await c.req.json()
})

Otherwise, for application/x-www-form-urlencoded and multipart/form-data you can retrieve the request body using the await parseBody() method.

app.post('/', async c => { 
  const body = await c.req.parseBody()
})

These are the main properties you’ll likely use:

In addition to those, you can use all the Request object methods and properties.

Lessons in this unit: