HTTP Server: Request body and query parameter parsing issues in JavaScript

[akapug]

Context

I'm building a Mastodon-compatible ActivityPub server (Kowloon) using Elide's HTTP server API, with a web frontend (Phanpy) that needs to interact via OAuth 2.0 and REST APIs. The application needs to:

1. Parse URL-encoded form data from POST request bodies (OAuth app registration)
2. Parse query parameters from GET requests (OAuth authorization flow)
3. Maintain state across requests (in-memory Maps for registered apps, tokens, etc.)

Issues Encountered

1. Request Body Parsing

Problem: request.body returns a ReadableByteStream object instead of a string or parsed data.

Code:

router.handle("POST", "/api/v1/apps", (request, response) => {
  console.log("Request body type:", typeof request.body);
  console.log("Request body:", request.body);
  // Output:
  // Request body type: object
  // Request body: elide.runtime.gvm.internals.intrinsics.js.webstreams.ReadableByteStream@7f297125
});

Expected: Either:

• A string containing the raw body data
• A parsed object for common content types (application/x-www-form-urlencoded, application/json)
• Documentation on how to read from the ReadableByteStream

Current workaround: Unable to parse POST body data, so using hardcoded default values.

2. Query Parameter Parsing

Problem: request.uri and request.url contain Kotlin object representations instead of plain strings with query parameters.

Code:

router.handle("GET", "/oauth/authorize", (request, response) => {
  console.log("request.uri:", request.uri);
  console.log("request.url:", request.url);
  // Output:
  // request.uri: http://localhost:3000/oauth/authorize?DefaultUrlParams(pairs=kotlin.sequences.TransformingSequence@454738da)
  // request.url: http://localhost:3000/oauth/authorize?DefaultUrlParams(pairs=kotlin.sequences.TransformingSequence@454738da)
});

Expected: Either:

• Plain string URLs like http://localhost:3000/oauth/authorize?client_id=abc&redirect_uri=xyz
• A request.query or request.params object with parsed parameters
• Access to the underlying Kotlin DefaultUrlParams object to extract parameters

Current workaround: Auto-approving all OAuth requests without validating client_id or other parameters.

3. State Persistence Between Requests

Problem: Global Maps defined at module scope appear to be cleared between requests.

Code:

// At top of file
const registeredApps = new Map();

// In one handler
router.handle("POST", "/api/v1/apps", (request, response) => {
  const clientId = generateRandomString(32);
  const app = { /* ... */ };
  registeredApps.set(clientId, app);
  console.log("Registered app with client_id:", clientId);
  console.log("registeredApps size after set:", registeredApps.size);
  // Output: registeredApps size after set: 1
});

// In another handler (different request)
router.handle("GET", "/oauth/authorize", (request, response) => {
  console.log("registeredApps size:", registeredApps.size);
  // Output: registeredApps size: 0
});

Expected: Module-level variables should persist across requests within the same server instance.

Question: Is this expected behavior? Should state be stored differently in Elide HTTP servers?

Environment

• Elide version: 1.0.0-beta10-rc5
• Runtime: GraalVM
• Platform: Docker (Ubuntu 24.04 base image)
• Installation: curl -sSL --tlsv1.2 https://elide.sh | bash -s - --yes --install-rev=1.0.0-beta10-rc5

Questions

1. Request Body: How should we read from ReadableByteStream? Is there documentation or examples?
2. Query Parameters: Is there a way to access parsed query parameters, or extract them from the Kotlin object?
3. State Persistence: Is module-level state expected to work, or should we use a different approach?

Possible Solutions

If these are limitations rather than bugs:

1. Request Body: Provide a helper method like request.body.text() or request.body.json() similar to Fetch API
2. Query Parameters: Add request.query object with parsed parameters, or expose the Kotlin Params object to JavaScript
3. State: Document the expected lifecycle and provide guidance on state management

Repository

Full code available at: https://github.com/akapug/kowloon-elide

Thank you for any guidance or fixes!