Inconsistent behaviour of req.query

[kdzwinel]

Calling /?x[20]=20 returns req.query = { x: [ '20' ] }
Calling /?x[21]=21 returns req.query = { x: { '21': '21' } }

I just spent significant amount of time debugging that and it turns out that qs library is responsible:

qs will also limit specifying indices in an array to a maximum index of 20. Any array members with an index of greater than 20 will instead be converted to an object

This value (20) can be changed so that's not a problem. However, I believe this should be documented in express.

[dougwilson]

Remember, you can always provide a function to app.set('query parser', fn) to parse the query however you like, including using qs with different settings besides the default:

app.set('query parser', function (str) {
  return qs.parse(str, {arrayLimit: 1000});
});

Otherwise, any documentation requests should be submitted to https://github.com/strongloop/expressjs.com :)

[kdzwinel]

Thank you for a quick response! I've described this issue on stackoverflow so that it's googlable. This should be enough to help others that will run into this issue to get it fixed quickly.

[bartonsprings]

Hi,
I am trying to achieve the same but change the object depth. I put this piece of code before the routes but it does not work. I am sure some wrong setting on my part.

// Change default setting for query parser upto handle 10 deep objects   
app.set('query parser', function (str) {
    return qs.parse(str, { depth: 10 });
});

The depth still stayed at 5. And anything deeper gets setup as long string.

[dougwilson]

@bartonsprings what exact version of Express are you using?

[bartonsprings]

"express": "^4.12.4",
"express-mysql-session": "^0.3.3",
"express-session": "^1.11.2",

[dougwilson]

Also, @bartonsprings , that statement must be before the very first .use or any other route statement, or it won't work. If you provide your full, complete app, I would be able to tell you.

[bartonsprings]

Aah! Let me try that and report back the result.

[bartonsprings]

Great! works now. Thanks.
For others planning to do the same, ensure that you have var qs = require("qs"); included in the file.