[multipart/form-data] Payload is parsed incorrectly

[tomdangpropine]

Context

• hapi version: 20.3.0

How can we help?

I'm working with the multipart/form-data on hapi (version 20.3.0), the request payload is not parsed correctly for array and nested object. Here is my request payload that i got

My route

server.route({
    method: 'POST',
    path: '/onboarding/{draft_id}',
    options: {
      handler: controller.create.bind(controller),
      validate: {
        // payload: createValidator,
        failAction: (_, __, err) => badRequest(err.message),
      },
      payload: {
        allow: 'multipart/form-data',
        maxBytes: 20 * 1000 * 1000, // max payload to be 20MB in size.
        multipart: {
          output: 'data',
        },
        parse: true,
      },
      tags: [
        'create-onboarding',
        'onboarding',
      ],
      description: 'Create Onboarding',
    },
});

[kanongil]

This needs more context to properly diagnose, but it seems like you expect one or more part names to be parsed as a query param field? Hapi does not support this, and you will need to rework your request, or maybe add a onPostAuth hook to transform from this manually.

How did you source this form input?

[tomdangpropine]

@kanongil thanks for your quick response, I sent a form-data request, I expected to have a nested object and array in request.payload. For example: I send a request below

I expect the request.payload looks like a nested objecte

{
  authorisation_proof: {
    file: ...,
    type: ....
  }
}

But It's not, it's a flat object like this

{
  "authorisation_proof[file]": ...,
  "authorisation_proof[type]": ...
}

Let me try transforming with the onPostAuth hook, but I think this transformation used to be available in the previous versions.

[kanongil]

I'm not aware of any standards that would expect hapi to parse form-data names as query string object keys, as you seem to suggest. I would strongly suggest that you change your approach, if possible, as this kind of parsing is prone to create security issues, as seen in the related qs module.

[devinivy]

hapi used to use the qs module for parsing complex field names like that, but it was discontinued back in v12. I believe the upgrade path in the release notes from back then is still fairly accurate: https://github.com/hapijs/hapi/issues/2985