I had this problem: an API I had to call from a Node.js app was only accepting data using the urlencoded format.

I had to figure out this problem: how to send urlencoded data using Axios?

The first thing we need to do is to install the qs module. It’s a cool querystring parsing and stringifying library with some added security:

npm install qs

Then we need to import the qs module along with the Axios import, of course:

const qs = require('qs')
const axios = require('axios')

If you use ES Modules, use

import qs from 'qs'
import axios from 'axios'

Next, the Axios code. Check my full Axios tutorial if you are not familiar with it.

In short, we need to use the full form for the Axios request. Not axios.post() but axios().

Inside there, we use the stringify() method provided by qs and we wrap the data into it. We then set the content-type header:

axios({
  method: 'post',
  url: 'https://my-api.com',
  data: qs.stringify({
    item1: 'value1',
    item2: 'value2'
  }),
  headers: {
    'content-type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=utf-8'
  }
})