[BUG]: Improve request validation and JSON parsing across backend functions

[Shweta-281]

Bug Description

Problem

Currently, multiple backend functions directly use JSON.parse(req.body) and perform validation using throwIfMissing. This approach has a few issues:

• Repeated parsing of request body across functions
• No centralized handling for invalid JSON (can cause runtime crashes)
• Validation utility previously treated falsy values (0, false, "") as missing
• Inconsistent error responses across different functions

Proposed Solution

• Enhance the existing throwIfMissing utility to correctly handle falsy values by only rejecting undefined and null
• Introduce a reusable parseBody utility for safe JSON parsing
• Refactor selected functions (e.g., create-room, join-room) to:
  • Use parseBody for request parsing
  • Use improved validation
  • Standardize API responses (success, message, data)

Benefits

• Prevents crashes due to invalid JSON input
• Improves consistency across backend APIs
• Enhances maintainability and readability
• Moves towards production-grade request handling

Scope

• Update utils.js
• Refactor 2–3 functions to adopt new utilities

Steps to Reproduce

No response

Logs and Screenshots

No response

Environment Details

No response

Impact

Critical - Application is unusable

Code of Conduct

• I have joined the Discord server and will post updates there
• I have searched existing issues to avoid duplicates