A plug for parsing the request body.

It invokes a list of :parsers, which are activated based on the request content-type. Custom parsers are also supported by defining a module that implements the behaviour defined by this module.

Once a connection goes through this plug, it will have :body_params set to the map of params parsed by one of the parsers listed in :parsers and :params set to the result of merging the :body_params and :query_params. In case :query_params have not yet been parsed, Plug.Conn.fetch_query_params/2 is automatically invoked.

This plug will raise Plug.Parsers.UnsupportedMediaTypeError by default if the request cannot be parsed by any of the given types and the MIME type has not been explicitly accepted with the :pass option.

Plug.Parsers.RequestTooLargeError will be raised if the request goes over the given limit. The default length is 8MB and it can be customized by passing the :length option to the Plug. :read_timeout and :read_length, as described by Plug.Conn.read_body/2, are also supported.

Parsers may raise a Plug.Parsers.ParseError if the request has a malformed body.

This plug only parses the body if the request method is one of the following:

• POST
• PUT
• PATCH
• DELETE

For requests with a different request method, this plug will only fetch the query params.

Options

• :parsers - a list of modules or atoms of built-in parsers to be invoked for parsing. These modules need to implement the behaviour outlined in this module.

• :pass - an optional list of MIME type strings that are allowed to pass through. Any mime not handled by a parser and not explicitly listed in :pass will raise UnsupportedMediaTypeError. For example:

  • ["*/*"] - never raises
  • ["text/html", "application/*"] - doesn't raise for those values
  • [] - always raises (default)

• :query_string_length - the maximum allowed size for query strings

• :validate_utf8 - boolean that tells whether or not we want to validate that parsed binaries are utf8 strings.

• :body_reader - an optional replacement (or wrapper) for Plug.Conn.read_body/2 to provide a function that gives access to the raw body before it is parsed and discarded. It is in the standard format of {Module, :function, [args]} (MFA) and defaults to {Plug.Conn, :read_body, []}. Note that this option is not used by Plug.Parsers.MULTIPART which relies instead on other functions defined in Plug.Conn.

All other options given to this Plug are forwarded to the parsers.

Examples

plug Plug.Parsers,
     parsers: [:urlencoded, :multipart],
     pass: ["text/*"]

Any other option given to Plug.Parsers is forwarded to the underlying parsers. Therefore, you can use a JSON parser and pass the :json_decoder option at the root:

plug Plug.Parsers,
     parsers: [:urlencoded, :json],
     json_decoder: Jason

Or directly to the parser itself:

plug Plug.Parsers,
     parsers: [:urlencoded, {:json, json_decoder: Jason}]

It is also possible to pass the :json_decoder as a {module, function, args} tuple, useful for passing options to the JSON decoder:

plug Plug.Parsers,
     parsers: [:json],
     json_decoder: {Jason, :decode!, [[floats: :decimals]]}

A common set of shared options given to Plug.Parsers is :length, :read_length and :read_timeout, which customizes the maximum request length you want to accept. For example, to support file uploads, you can do:

plug Plug.Parsers,
     parsers: [:urlencoded, :multipart],
     length: 20_000_000

However, the above will increase the maximum length of all request types. If you want to increase the limit only for multipart requests (which is typically the ones used for file uploads), you can do:

plug Plug.Parsers,
     parsers: [
       :urlencoded,
       {:multipart, length: 20_000_000} # Increase to 20MB max upload
     ]

Built-in parsers

Plug ships with the following parsers:

• Plug.Parsers.URLENCODED - parses application/x-www-form-urlencoded requests (can be used as :urlencoded as well in the :parsers option)
• Plug.Parsers.MULTIPART - parses multipart/form-data and multipart/mixed requests (can be used as :multipart as well in the :parsers option)
• Plug.Parsers.JSON - parses application/json requests with the given :json_decoder (can be used as :json as well in the :parsers option)

File handling

If a file is uploaded via any of the parsers, Plug will stream the uploaded contents to a file in a temporary directory in order to avoid loading the whole file into memory. For such, the :plug application needs to be started in order for file uploads to work. More details on how the uploaded file is handled can be found in the documentation for Plug.Upload.

When a file is uploaded, the request parameter that identifies that file will be a Plug.Upload struct with information about the uploaded file (e.g. filename and content type) and about where the file is stored.

The temporary directory where files are streamed to can be customized by setting the PLUG_TMPDIR environment variable on the host system. If PLUG_TMPDIR isn't set, Plug will look at some environment variables which usually hold the value of the system's temporary directory (like TMPDIR or TMP). If no value is found in any of those variables, /tmp is used as a default.

Custom body reader

Sometimes you may want to customize how a parser reads the body from the connection. For example, you may want to cache the body to perform verification later, such as HTTP Signature Verification. This can be achieved with a custom body reader that would read the body and store it in the connection, such as:

defmodule CacheBodyReader do
  def read_body(conn, opts) do
    {:ok, body, conn} = Plug.Conn.read_body(conn, opts)
    conn = update_in(conn.assigns[:raw_body], &[body | (&1 || [])])
    {:ok, body, conn}
  end
end

which could then be set as:

plug Plug.Parsers,
  parsers: [:urlencoded, :json],
  pass: ["text/*"],
  body_reader: {CacheBodyReader, :read_body, []},
  json_decoder: Jason