Angular JS POST Submission Failure - angularjs

Question

I'm new to angular JS. I've followed an online tutorial and created a simple login form on the frontend, and linked it to the backend. Or at least I've tried. The backend is a nodejs/express server, which has a route for handling the login attempts from the frontend. It will be checking to see if the username and password used on the form are from an existing user account, or not.
The problem is that for some reason, the http POST call from the angular controller, always results in a ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT response in the browser console.
The thing is, though if I interface with the api endpoint using curl, it works just fine and the server does exactly what it's supposed to do. Just for some reason the angular frontend form cannot connect to the backend. Here's the angular controller code:
app.controller('loginCtrl, function($scope, $location, $http){
$scope.login = function(){
var parameter = JSON.stringify({ username: $scope.username, password: $scope.password });
$http({
url: 'https://localhost:8443/api/login'
method: 'POST',
data: parameter
}).then(function(response){
console.log('success: ' + JSON.stringify(response));
},
function(response){
console.log('failed: ' + JSON.stringify(response));
});
}
});
The nodejs backend server is serving content over HTTPS. This controller function (login) is being hit, and the POST is being made, but it simply times out. And again, manually interfacing with these api endpoints works as expected when using curl or wget.
Any insight into the issue or what I'm doing wrong?