open api error: request should have required property '.headers' - docker

Question

My nodejs app has an open-api.yaml file and express-openapi-validate validator. I'm doing a POST request which is working and the api validator doesn't return any errors:

curl --request POST 'http://localhost:33004/my-app/settings' --data-raw '{"serials":["1234","2355"]}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json'

In my open-api.yaml I have:

openapi: '3.0.0'
servers:
 - url: 'http://{host}/my-app'
   variables:
     host:
     enum:
       - 'localhost'
       ....
...
paths:
    /settings:
      ...
      post:
        tags:
          - 'settings'
        operationId: 'postSettings'
        requestBody:
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                type: object
                properties:
                  serials:
                    type: array
                    items:
                      type: string
...

Then I tried dockerizing my app - created a docker container, and ran it inside with the pm2-runtime. However, when I send the same request to the docker container when the app is running in it, I get error while validating request: request should have required property '.headers' . I have no property '.headers' mentioned in the open-api.yaml file.

I tried removing the validator middleware, and the request went through just fine. Can you help me understand what is the validator complaining about?

EDIT:

I managed to find the error object:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "dataPath": "",
      "keyword": "required",
      "message": "should have required property '.headers'",
      "params": {
        "missingProperty": ".headers"
      },
      "schemaPath": "#/required"
    }
  ],
  "name": "ValidationError",
  "statusCode": 400
}

needless to say I have no required headers property...

Gregorygregrory

Try adding -H "Content-Type: application/json" to your curl command. Does this help? – Figurehead

Edited my question, the curl also included this header, just forgot to add it here in the question. It doesn't help... – Gregorygregrory

Not sure if it matters, but YAML indentation is off - e.g. tags, operationId and requestBody must be inside post, not alongside it. Try validating your YAML in editor.swagger.io. – Figurehead

copy-pasta indentation problems, the format is fine in the code – Gregorygregrory

Same problem or probably related: #70656596 – Heavyduty

Still happening with Node 18 and generator 6.0.1. – Heavyduty

Answer 1

For future reference if others come here for this problem:

I finally found the issue: I was using FROM node:alpine in my Dockerfile, which indicates the latest version of node. However, my application was running on node 10.18.1

Once I changed to FROM:node:10.18.1-alpine the issue was resolved.

Apparently, the express-openapi-validate plugin has some issues in the latest node module, or so it seems.

Gregorygregrory

same problem, this worked for me in v14.16.1 – Cammycamomile

Unfortunately this solution is not viable forever, the latest node version supporting this is not the current LTS anymore. – Balance

I'm running Node 18.6.0 and am dead in the water with the same problem. Trying to test my API with the Node/Express combo and it's 100% no-go because every query fails with this header complaint. The server was generated by openapi-generator version 6.0.1. – Heavyduty

Same problem for me. It's so frustrating, after spending days trying out swagger and having issues. I spend another day getting openAPITools working and now I have to use Node 10? – Tybi

Answer 2

I had the same for all node versions <= 14 and for express-openapi-validator version <= 3.

Impossible to have the validator working with node version 16 and we were stuck to an old dev version because of it.

The solution was to migrate to express-openapi-validator v4.

The migration is explained here https://github.com/cdimascio/express-openapi-validator#upgrading-from-3x

This (v3):

const validator = new OpenApiValidator({
  apiSpec: openApiYaml,
  operationHandlers: __dirname
})
app.use(validator)

becomes (v4):

const validator = OpenApiValidator.middleware({
  apiSpec: 'src/openapi.yaml'
})
app.use(validator)

The code was originally generated by https://hub.docker.com/r/openapitools/openapi-generator-cli

Balance

Answer 3

Might be a little late but hopefully will be useful for others.

The problem is related to this code (this is the compiled version)

...
const reqToValidate = Object.assign({}, req, { cookies: req.cookies
                    ? Object.assign({}, req.cookies, req.signedCookies) : undefined });
const valid = validator(reqToValidate);
...

on OpenApiValidator and the fact that Express req object use accessor get/set for headers, as a result Object.assign will not propagate headers information and consequenlty the validator function will not find the required headers properties, only rawHeaders is available.

As a quick fix I implemented the following:

const validator = this.openApiValidator.validate(method, path);
return (req, res, next) => {
    const reqToValidate = Object.assign({}, req, {
        cookies: req.cookies
            ? Object.assign({}, req.cookies, req.signedCookies) : undefined
    });
   
    if (!reqToValidate.hasOwnProperty('headers')) {
        reqToValidate.headers = req.headers;
    }
    return validator(reqToValidate, res, next);
};

which adapts Express request and propagate all required information regarding headers.

Projection

Which file did you make this edit to? I'm running into the same issue after generating server stub using the below command: ./openapi-generator-cli.sh generate -i petstore.json -g nodejs-express-server -o petstore/ – Tybi