IIS & HapiJS error : 404 on trying to serve static files - node.js

Question

So, I'm hosting a hapijs application on Windows server.
Everything worked okay until I had the need to serve some static files (my front-end) from my hapijs application.
I added a simple route:
// Index
server.route({
method: 'GET',
path: '/dist',
options: {
cors: {
origin: ['*'],
},
},
handler(request, h) {
server.log('info', `GET - ${request.url.path}`);
return h.file(__dirname + '/dist/index.html')
},
});
and this works okay.
But for the assets (located in the same folder), nothing to do, I can't make it work. I tried the following things:
server.route({
method: 'GET',
path: '/assets/{filename}',
options: {
cors: {
origin: ['*'],
},
},
handler(request, h) {
server.log('info', `GET - ${request.url.path}`);
return h.file(`${__dirname}/dist/assets/${request.params.filename}`)
},
});
and
server.route({
method: 'GET',
path: '/assets/{filename}.js',
options: {
cors: {
origin: ['*'],
},
},
handler(request, h) {
server.log('info', `GET - ${request.url.path}`);
return h.file(`${__dirname}/dist/assets/${request.params.filename}.js`)
},
});
And some other flavours of it. Until I realized that it is actually IIS and not the hapijs that returns a 404.
So here is my web.config file :
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<handlers>
<remove name="OPTIONSVerbHandler" />
<add name="iisnode" path="server.js" verb="GET,POST,OPTIONS" modules="iisnode" />
<add name="OPTIONSVerbHandler" path="*" verb="OPTIONS" modules="iisnode" />
</handlers>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name="DynamicContent">
<match url=".*" />
<action type="Rewrite" url="server.js" />
</rule>
</rules>
<outboundRules>
<rule name="Set-Access-Control-Allow-Origin for known origins">
<match serverVariable="RESPONSE_Access-Control-Allow-Origin" pattern=".+" negate="true" />
<action type="Rewrite" value="*" />
</rule>
</outboundRules>
</rewrite>
<httpErrors existingResponse="PassThrough" />
<security>
<requestFiltering>
<hiddenSegments>
<add segment="node_modules" />
</hiddenSegments>
</requestFiltering>
</security>
<iisnode nodeProcessCommandLine=""C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs\node.exe"" />
</system.webServer>
<system.web>
<httpRuntime enableVersionHeader="false" />
</system.web>
</configuration>
I tried adding a
<rule name="StaticContent">
<action type="Rewrite" url="server.js"/>
</rule>
block but that does not change anything.
In case you didn't get it yet, I am no windows server user so I'm trying to solve that problem with Google searches & al but no luck so far.
I guess my question is :
WHY does IIS try to search for a file, even though it is supposed to rewrite all path to go to my NodeJS server ???
How does it know which of my routes are good and which are not?
How to make it not search for that file?

Answer 1

In the end, I managed to solve the problem with the following configuration:
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<handlers>
<add name="iisnode" path="server.js" verb="GET,POST,OPTIONS" modules="iisnode" />
</handlers>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name="LogFile" patternSyntax="ECMAScript" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="iisnode"/>
</rule>
<rule name="NodeInspector" patternSyntax="ECMAScript" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^server.js\/debug[\/]?" />
</rule>
<rule name="DynamicContent" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^v1.*" />
<action type="Rewrite" url="server.js"/>
</rule>
<rule name="StaticContent">
<action type="Rewrite" url="public{REQUEST_URI}"/>
</rule>
</rules>
<outboundRules>
<rule name="Set-Access-Control-Allow-Origin for known origins">
<match serverVariable="RESPONSE_Access-Control-Allow-Origin" pattern=".+" negate="true" />
<action type="Rewrite" value="*" />
</rule>
</outboundRules>
</rewrite>
<security>
<requestFiltering>
<hiddenSegments>
<add segment="node_modules" />
</hiddenSegments>
</requestFiltering>
</security>
<iisnode nodeProcessCommandLine=""C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs\node.exe"" />
</system.webServer>
<system.web>
<httpRuntime enableVersionHeader="false" />
</system.web>
</configuration>