How to read ctx.request.body in koa 2 (without body-parser)?

Question

I want to read ctx.request.body from a post without body-parser middleware.

const Koa = require('koa');
const Router = require('koa-router');
const app = new Koa();
const router = new Router();
app.use(router.routes());

router.post('/publish', async (ctx, next) => {
  let msg = JSON.stringify(ctx.request.body);
  console.log(msg); //undefined
  console.log(ctx.request.body); //undefined
  console.log(ctx.req.body);  //undefined
});

app.listen(process.env.PORT);

Using curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"key":"val"}' 'http://localhost:8080/publish' I get 3 undefined.

How do I solve this problem? I know that koa can't parse req.body, but why doesn't JSON.stringify(ctx.request.body) work?

Answer 1

JSON.stringify(ctx.request.body) does not work, because it only gets set if you use one of the available body parsers. So if you do not want to use body-parser (or any other body-parser middleware), you have to parse the body from req.body by yourself.

But honestly, why would you not want to use one of the existing solutions for your problem?