title: Flask - How do I read the raw body in a POST request when the content type is "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
body: <p>Turns out that Flask sets <code>request.data</code> to an empty string if the content type of the request is <code>application/x-www-form-urlencoded</code>. Since I'm using a JSON body request, I just want to parse the json or force Flask to parse it and return <code>request.json</code>.</p>
  
  <p>This is needed because changing the AJAX content type forces an HTTP OPTION request, which complicates the back-end.</p>
  
  <p>How do I make Flask return the raw data in the request object?</p>