POST methods broken

[inkpot-monkey]

First let me say thanks for this great API.

I've noticed while playing around with it that all the POST methods seem to be broken i.e.:

❯ curl --location 'https://countriesnow.space/api/v0.1/countries/states' \
--data '{
    "country": "Nigeria"
}'
{"error":true,"msg":"missing param (country or iso2)"}

I've got these requests to work with the query string, IE

❯ curl --location 'https://countriesnow.space/api/v0.1/countries/states/?country="Nigeria"'

So I am guessing something is going wrong with the Middleware redirection in

countriesNowAPI/middlewares/redirectPostToGet.js

Line 2 in 56c82cc

* Redirect all POST requests by appending "/q" to the end of the route

Is there anyway of investigating this further? I've cloned the repo and the tests pass, which contradicts my lived experience.

Alternatively, is it time to remove all the POST requests (at least in the documentation) for their proper GET versions? I'm happy to take this on

[MartinsOnuoha]

Hi @thomassdk, Thanks for reporting this; I tried replicating this problem on postman but can't. the post requests seem to be working just fine.

[inkpot-monkey]

The context I am trying to use the api in is the browser where the fetch request is also broken, here is the minimal example gotten from the docs:

var raw = '{\n    "country": "nigeria"\n}';

var requestOptions = {
  method: "POST",
  body: raw,
  redirect: "follow",
};

fetch("https://countriesnow.space/api/v0.1/countries/states", requestOptions)
  .then((response) => response.text())
  .then((result) => console.log(result))
  .catch((error) => console.log("error", error));

Which gives me the following error

❯ bun api.js
{"error":true,"msg":"missing param (country or iso2)"}

Adding the query parameter returns the correct result

var raw = '{\n    "country": "nigeria"\n}';

var requestOptions = {
  method: "GET",
};

fetch(
  'https://countriesnow.space/api/v0.1/countries/states?country="Nigeria"',
  requestOptions,
)
  .then((response) => response.text())
  .then((result) => console.log(result))
  .catch((error) => console.log("error", error));

Confused as to why postman is working correctly...

[MartinsOnuoha]

Would you like to update the documentation with the GET equivalent in the interim while we figure out what's wrong with the POST requests?

[MartinsOnuoha]

@ink-pot-monkey feel free to open an MR for this fix 🤗

[citizen-of-makondo]

I have the same problem
When I use postman - everything is fine, but when I build my android app
Expected response body of the type 'class com.alexilinskii.bookcrossing.ui.city_search.CityResponse (Kotlin reflection is not available)' but was 'class io.ktor.utils.io.ByteBufferChannel (Kotlin reflection is not available)' In response from https://countriesnow.space/api/v0.1/countries/cities`
Response status 301 Moved Permanently
Response header ContentType: null
Request header Accept: application/json

You can read how to resolve NoTransformationFoundException at FAQ:
https://ktor.io/docs/faq.html#no-transformation-found-exception`

[TimAagaard]

@citizen-of-makondo pretty sure this is caused by Ktor not properly supporting redirects.

Since these routes are just retrieving data, semantically they should be GET instead of POST. The original POST handlers were kept for backwards compatibility and convenience and redirected to their GET equivalents.

You should be able to call the GET route directly to avoid the redirect. There also appears to be a workaround for this issue in Ktor listed here:

ktorio/ktor#1793