How to send a request from Nuxt.js client over Nuxt.js server and receive the response back to the client - vue.js

Question

I'm developing a Vue.js application which has only frontend (no server) and send a lot of requests to different APIs. The originally quite simple app became more complex. And there are problems with some APIs, because browsers do not accept the responses due to CORS. That is why I'm trying to test, if I can migrate the app to Nuxt.js.
My approach is as follows (inspired by this comment), but I expect, that there is probably a better way to send the requests from the client over the server.
pages/test-page.vue
methods: {
async sendRequest(testData) {
const response = await axios.post('api', testData)
// Here can I use the response on the page.
}
}
nuxt.config.js
serverMiddleware: [
{ path: '/api', handler: '~/server-middleware/postRequestHandler.js' }
],
server-middleware/postRequestHandler.js
import axios from 'axios'
const configs = require('../store/config.js')
module.exports = function(req, res, next) {
let body = ''
req.on('data', (data) => {
body += data
})
req.on('end', async () => {
if (req.hasOwnProperty('originalUrl') && req.originalUrl === '/api') {
const parsedBody = JSON.parse(body)
// Send the request from the server.
const response = await axios.post(
configs.state().testUrl,
body
)
req.body = response
}
next()
})
}
middleware/test.js (see: API: The Context)
export default function(context) {
// Universal keys
const { store } = context
// Server-side
if (process.server) {
const { req } = context
store.body = req.body
}
}
pages/api.vue
<template>
{{ body }}
</template>
<script>
export default {
middleware: 'test',
computed: {
body() {
return this.$store.body
}
}
}
</script>
When the user makes an action on the page "test", which will initiate the method "sendRequest()", then the request "axios.post('api', testData)" will result in a response, which contains the HTML code of the page "api". I can then extract the JSON "body" from the HTML.
I find the final step as suboptimal, but I have no idea, how can I send just the JSON and not the whole page. But I suppose, that there must be a much better way to get the data to the client.

Answer 1

There are two possible solutions:
Proxy (see: https://nuxtjs.org/faq/http-proxy)
API (see: https://medium.com/#johnryancottam/running-nuxt-in-parallel-with-express-ffbd1feef83c)
Ad 1. Proxy
The configuration of the proxy can look like this:
nuxt.config.js
module.exports = {
...
modules: [
'#nuxtjs/axios',
'#nuxtjs/proxy'
],
proxy: {
'/proxy/packagist-search/': {
target: 'https://packagist.org',
pathRewrite: {
'^/proxy/packagist-search/': '/search.json?q='
},
changeOrigin: true
}
},
...
}
The request over proxy can look like this:
axios
.get('/proxy/packagist-search/' + this.search.phpLibrary.searchPhrase)
.then((response) => {
console.log(
'Could get the values packagist.org',
response.data
)
}
})
.catch((e) => {
console.log(
'Could not get the values from packagist.org',
e
)
})
Ad 2. API
Select Express as the project’s server-side framework, when creating the new Nuxt.js app.
server/index.js
...
app.post('/api/confluence', confluence.send)
app.use(nuxt.render)
...
server/confluence.js (simplified)
const axios = require('axios')
const config = require('../nuxt.config.js')
exports.send = function(req, res) {
let body = ''
let page = {}
req.on('data', (data) => {
body += data
})
req.on('end', async () => {
const parsedBody = JSON.parse(body)
try {
page = await axios.get(
config.api.confluence.url.api + ...,
config.api.confluence.auth
)
} catch (e) {
console.log('ERROR: ', e)
}
}
res.json({
page
})
}
The request over API can look like this:
this.$axios
.post('api/confluence', postData)
.then((response) => {
console.log('Wiki response: ', response.data)
})
.catch((e) => {
console.log('Could not update the wiki page. ', e)
})

Answer 2

Now with nuxtjs3 :
nuxtjs3 rc release
you have fetch or useFetch no need to import axios or other libs, what is great, automatic parsing of body, automatic detection of head
fetching data
you have middleware and server api on same application, you can add headers on queries, hide for example token etc
server layer
a quick example here in vue file i call server api :
const { status } = await $fetch.raw( '/api/newsletter', { method: "POST", body: this.form.email } )
.then( (response) => ({
status: response.status,
}) )
.catch( (error) => ({
status: error?.response?.status || 500,
}) );
it will call a method on my server, to init the server on root directory i created a folder name server then api, and a file name newsletter.ts (i use typescript)
then in this file :
export default defineEventHandler(async (event) => {
const {REST_API, MAILINGLIST_UNID, MAILINGLIST_TOKEN} = useRuntimeConfig();
const subscriber = await readBody(event);
console.log("url used for rest call" + REST_API);
console.log("token" + MAILINGLIST_TOKEN);
console.log("mailing list unid" + MAILINGLIST_UNID);
let recipientWebDTO = {
email: subscriber,
subscriptions: [{
"mailingListUnid": MAILINGLIST_UNID
}]
};
const {status} = await $fetch.raw(REST_API, {
method: "POST",
body: recipientWebDTO,
headers: {
Authorization: MAILINGLIST_TOKEN,
},
}).then((response) => ({
status: response.status,
}))
.catch((error) => ({
status: error?.response?.status || 500,
}));
event.res.statusCode = status;
return "";
})
What are the benefits ?
REST_API,MAILING_LIST_UNID, MAILING_LIST_TOKEN are not exposed on
client and even file newsletter.ts is not available on debug browser.
You can add log only on server side You event not expose api url to avoid some attacks
You don't have to create a new backend just to hide some criticals token or datas
then it is up to you to choose middleware route or server api. You don't have to import new libs, h3 is embedded via nitro with nuxtjs3 and fetch with vuejs3
for proxy you have also sendProxy offered by h3 : sendProxy H3
When you build in dev server and client build in same time(and nothing to implement or configure in config file), and with build to o, just don deploy your project in static way (but i think you can deploy front in static and server in node i don't know)