When using express, the expectation is that you'll serve a public directory.
const app = express();
app.use('/', express.static('./public/'));
Is there a way I could serve a generated file instead? For my application, it would be much more convenient if I could build the index.html directly, then serve that 'file' directly from memory, without having to save it just to then serve it via 'use'.
the expectation is that you'll serve a public directory
I don't think that is the expectation at all. Many applications just use routes instead making a REST micro service.
There are two ways you can do what you want to do.
Use a templating engine with NodeJS and just res.render() the template. Check this out for more information, even though the article is using .pug you can use these ones as well. Popular ones are ejs, handlebars
app.get('/', function (req, res) {
res.render('index', { title: 'Hey', message: 'Hello there!' })
})
Or you can write everything inside res.send() for example:
app.get('/', function (req, res) {
//set the appropriate HTTP header
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/html');
//send multiple responses to the client
res.send('<h1>This is the response</h1>');
});
Related
So I am making a node.js server for my webpage. And after having added root route that sends the index.html it also sends the game.html page with out it being specified. The game.html file is in a folder called game in the root directory. So I am wondering why is it sending the game.html file? And is it supposed to happened, with out me saying what the server is supposed to send in the "/game" path?
I am using Node.js and Express.
const express = require("express");
const app = express();
const port = 3000;
app.use(express.static("public"));
// ROUTES
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
res.sendFile("index.html", {root: "public"});
})
// Listening
app.listen(port, () => {
console.log(`Listening at port http://localhost:${port}`);
})
In your code, you have two route handlers that can send responses back to incoming requests.
This one:
app.get("/", (req, res) => {
res.sendFile("index.html", {root: "public"});
});
is pretty obvious. If the request is /, then send back the index.html file.
This one:
app.use(express.static("public"));
tells express to compare the incoming path of the request to any files in your public directory and, if they match, then send that file back as the response to that request. This is exactly what express.static() is designed for and what it is supposed to do. It is commonly used for serving static resources such as CSS files, JS files and even static HTML files since one route can automatically serve an entire directory hierarchy.
So, if an incoming request arrives for /game/game.html and, the public directory contains this:
public
game
game.html
Then, express.static("public") will find a match for /game/game.html and will send back the game.html file as the response. This is working as designed.
Because of this, you should never put anything that you don't want automatically served inside the directory that you pass to express.static() - in your specific code example, the "public" directory.
I have express on back-end and react.js on frontend, but i also have admin page with pug view engine, working on express routes, how can i use these in one domain
Expressjs is composable in a really nice way. You can have a top level express application which routes off to sub-express apps and serve your individual services.
Lets say you want to serve your react frontend from www.example.com, your admin (pug views) from www.example.com/admin, and you also want to have an api which serves the react frontend at www.example.com/api`.
You would want something a bit like the following code sample which demonstates the composition of express applications. I've not run the code but it should be enough to get you going.
// This parent app acts as a parent layer and router
// for all your "sub apps". Any middleware you apply
// to this express app will apply to *all your other
// sub-apps*.
const parentApp = express();
// We now create another express instance, this will
// house the API. It can be in another file and you
// could require in something like "require('api');"
// instead but for brevity we'll keep it all in one
// file.
const apiApp = express();
apiApp.get('/info', (req, res, next) => {
console.log('/info');
return res.sendStatus(200);
});
// Mount the sub app on the /api route. This means
// you can how hit 'www.example.com/api/info' and
// you'll get back a 200 status code.
parentApp.use('/api', apiApp);
// Now we setup the admin app which we'll add pug
// views into. This is an example so just pretend
// the views exist.
const adminApp = express();
adminApp.set('views', './views');
adminApp.set('view engine', 'pug');
adminApp.get('/login', (req, res, next) => {
return res.render('login', { title: 'Hey' });
});
// Mount the sub app on the /admin route. This way
// we can hit www.example.com/admin/login to get
// our login page rendered.
parentApp.use('/admin', adminApp);
// Now we create and mount the frontend app that
// serves our fully built react app. You could do
// this with nginx instead but you wanted to do
// it with express so lets do it that way.
const frontendApp = express();
frontendApp.use(express.static('/frontend));
parentApp.use('/', frontendApp);
If you'd rather not create yourself a top level express app (and thus creating a bit of a monolith application) then I'd recommend checking out the nginx documentation, or the docs for the HTTP server you use. You should be able to direct requests to particular endpoints to different node applications running on different ports. Static files can then be served natively by your HTTP server. This is definetely a more efficient and elegant approach, but since you asked about express I wanted to showcase that approach primarily.
Just developed a simple angular 4 application with this tutorial
https://scotch.io/tutorials/mean-app-with-angular-2-and-the-angular-cli
But how can i integrate angular 4 app to a express application that generated with express generator??.
One approach is REST API's method that is express JS app use as API provider and the angular application communicate with REST api.
But i would like to serve the angular application from express application itself..
I think this will helpful to you. First I assume, you use express server to handle some api request and let's say those routes are begin with /api. they can be differ from yours.
First build your angular application by ng build and it will create a folder called /dist in your project folder.
Copy that folder in to your express project /public folder. You have to put them in an static routed folder. /public folder is a default static route folder. That is why I put it there. If you have your own one, you can put there too.
edit your app.js file as follows
// Set our api routes
app.use('/api', api); // API router definitions.
// Catch all other routes and return the index file
app.get('*', function(req, res) {
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, 'dist/index.html'));
});
Hope you will help this way. Thanks.
You can serve it through your server like this:
// Catch root route and return index.html
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, 'app/index.html'));
});
// Catch all other routes
app.get('*', (req, res) => {
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, 'app', req.originalUrl));
});
But be careful to set the right path to your index.html.
There is a technology stack called MEAN which means (coincidence :) MongoDB, Express, Angular and Nodejs. So this is basically what you are looking for.
Altough you can create you own file structure, there is a mean-cli similar to Express-generator and the angular-cli. You can find it here.
In order for Angular to work properly (like requesting a site like example.com/something and then also activate the route something) I always return my index.html for any request and setup express to return all static files as well. Then I create a route /api which handles all my REST api requests.
Make sure to first setup your /api route, then your other static files from angular like bundle.js and finally index.html as route **.
I'm new to node. I was using express-handlebars as my view-engine, but now I've added React and I understood that I no longer require handlebars. The problem that I'm having is that in order to get to the index.html page, without handlebars, I had to use
app.use(express.static('./public'));
Everything gets rendered from react, but what if I want to do some other things when the user goes to the index page like
app.get("/",function(req,res){
console.log("connected");
});
If I add the get request after exporting the static files, the console.log never gets called. If I use it before, it does get called, but I can see the page loading forever. How should I structure the application now that I'm using react and I don t have a view engine anymore?
In your specific case, if you don't want to render anything to the user, you should turn your function into a middleware :
app.get("/",function(req,res, next){
console.log("connected");
next();
});
and put it before the app.use(express.static('./public'));
However, if you want to do actual logic with return values and such, I would suggest that you setup some kind of API that you request using Ajax from the client.
You can check my repository
https://github.com/kennethmervin01/react-node-production
it's a boilerplate to serve react app in node.js/express
then check my code inside app.js
You just need to copy the production build of your react app inside the react folder
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, "../react")));
app.get("/*", (req, res) => {
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, "../react", "index.html"));
});
I'm using Express, which loads AngularJS from a static directory. Normally, I will request http://localhost/, in which Express serves me my index.html and all of the correct Angular files, etc. In my Angular app, I have these routes setup, which replace the content in an ng-view:
$routeProvider.when('/', {
templateUrl: '/partials/main.html',
controller: MainCtrl,
});
$routeProvider.when('/project/:projectId', {
templateUrl: '/partials/project.html',
controller: ProjectCtrl,
});
$locationProvider.html5Mode(true);
On my main page, I have a link to <a href="/project/{{project.id}}">, which will successfully load the template and direct me to http://localhost/project/3 or whatever ID I have specified. The problem is when I try to direct my browser to http://localhost/project/3 or refresh the page, the request is going to the Express/Node server, which returns Cannot GET /project/3.
How do I setup my Express routes to accommodate for this? I'm guessing it will require the use of $location in Angular (although I'd prefer to avoid the ugly ?searches and #hashes they use), but I'm clueless about how to go about setting up the Express routes to handle this.
Thanks.
with express 4, you probably want to catch all requests and redirect to angularjs index.html page.
app.use(app.router); doesn't exist anymore and res.sendfile is deprecated, use res.sendFilewith an uppercase F.
app.post('/projects/', projectController.createProject);
app.get('/projects/:id', projectController.getProject);
app.get('*', function (req, res) {
res.sendFile('/public/index.html');
});
put all your API routes before the route for every path app.get('*', function (req, res){...})
I would create a catch-all handler that runs after your regular routes that sends the necessary data.
app = express();
// your normal configuration like `app.use(express.bodyParser());` here
// ...
app.use(app.router);
app.use(function(req, res) {
// Use res.sendfile, as it streams instead of reading the file into memory.
res.sendfile(__dirname + '/public/index.html');
});
app.router is the middleware that runs all of your Express routes (like app.get and app.post); normally, Express puts this at the very end of the middleware chain automatically, but you can also add it to the chain explicitly, like we did here.
Then, if the URL isn't handled by app.router, the last middleware will send the Angular HTML view down to the client. This will happen for any URL that isn't handled by the other middleware, so your Angular app will have to handle invalid routes correctly.
I guess I should have clarified that I wasn't interested in using a template engine, but having Angular pull all of the HTML partials on it's own, Node is functioning completely as a static server here (but it won't be for the JSON API. Brian Ford shows how to do it using Jade here: http://briantford.com/blog/angular-express.html
My app is a single-page app, so I created an Express route for each possible URL pattern, and each of them does the same thing.
fs.readFile(__dirname + '/public/index.html', 'utf8', function(err, content) {
res.send(content);
});
I was assuming I would have to pass some request variables to Angular, but it looks like Angular takes care of it automatically.