Can't figure out Parse Hosting - Cloud Code Integration - express

Question

I've been working on this seemingly simple problem for about a week now and feel like there is conflicting information and am hoping someone can give shed some light for me. I'm trying to use Parse Hosting for a marketing site with bootstrap, just HTML and CSS with a little JS; and Cloud Code to do some simple server side tasks like charging a card via Stripe. Everything in the documentation makes it seem this is easily doable, but the documentation also seems to lead me to believe certain methods aren't.
For example, this video shows a Stripe engineer building exactly what I want. However, it's not abundantly clear that he is using pure HTML and CSS for the front end instead of an Express templating engine (which I am not using) - http://blog.parse.com/videos/parse-developer-day-2013-a-new-kind-of-checkout/
This post says Parse Hosting and Express now work hand in hand, GREAT!
http://blog.parse.com/announcements/building-parse-web-apps-with-the-express-web-framework/
But the documentation (JS > Cloud Hosting > Dynamic Websites) says you have to delete index.html >> "If you choose to use Express or Node.js, you'll first need to delete public/index.html so that requests can get through to your custom handler functions."
I want to have a single page website hosted at public/index.html that uses Stripe Checkout v3 to create a token then pass that to Parse for a quick execution of the charge, but again, every which way I try has been unsuccessful so far.
In addition, I'm thinking Parse Hosting of pure HTML/CSS won't work with Cloud Code the way I want because a simple call of /hello below returns nothing.
Here's my code:
//public
//index.html
<form action="/charge" method="POST">
<script
src="https://checkout.stripe.com/checkout.js" class="stripe-button"
data-key="pk_test_zippitydoo"
data-image="http://image.jpg"
data-name="Thing"
data-description="Shut up and take my money"
data-amount="4000">
</script>
</form>
//cloud
//main.js
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var Stripe = require('stripe');
Stripe.initialize('sk_test_blahblahblah');
app.get('/hello', function(req, res) {
res.send('hello world');
});
app.post('/charge', function(req, res) {
res.send('Charge Attempt');
token_id = req.body.stripe_token
Stripe.Tokens.retrieve(token_id).then(function(token) {
return Stripe.Charges.create({
amount: 1000,
currency: "usd",
source: token_id
});
});
});

Answer 1

What you need is for express to serve your HTML. To do this, register a static resources directory. In your main.js, after you instantiate your app with var app = express(), do this:
app.use(express.static('public'));
Express should then treat your /public/index.html file as the directory index by default, and your app will serve any other files under /public. More info: http://expressjs.com/4x/api.html#express.static

Answer 2

There are several things I did wrong here. I'll explain my mistakes, then you can compare the below code that works with the above code in the question that doesn't.
1) I wasn't parsing the data I was receiving (see underneath // App configuration section)
2) The JSON that is passed needs to be parsed using CamelCase (stripeToken not stripe_token)
3) The charge is set as a variable, not returned (var = charge instead of return charge). Return may work, I didn't test it however.
4) It is imperative that you include the app.listen(); in order to connect to the public folder from the cloud folder
//cloud
//main.js
var express = require('express');
var Stripe = require('stripe');
Stripe.initialize('sk_test_blahblahblah');
var app = express();
// App configuration section
app.use(express.bodyParser()); // Middleware for reading request body
app.post('/charge', function(req, res) {
var stripeToken = req.body.stripeToken;
var stripeEmail = req.body.stripeEmail;
res.send('Charging your card...');
var charge = Stripe.Charges.create({
amount: price,
currency: "usd",
source: stripeToken,
receipt_email: stripeEmail
}, function(err, charge) {
if (err && err.type === 'StripeCardError') {
res.send('The card has been declined. Please check your card and try again.');
}
});
});
// Attach the Express app to your Cloud Code
app.listen();