access to public folder is giving me an error - node.js

Question

I am new to Nodejs and I am following a course on Pluralsight for Nodejs using express.
I have the following code:
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var port = 5000;
app.use(express.static('public'));
app.get('/', function (req, res) {
res.send('Hello World');
});
app.get('/books', function (req, res) {
res.send('Hello Books');
});
app.listen(port, function (err) {
console.log('running server on port ' + port);
});
And then from the command line I run the following:
$ npm start
This is my json file:
{
"name": "library",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "",
"main": "app.js",
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
"start": "node app.js"
},
"author": "",
"license": "ISC",
"dependencies": {
"express": "^4.14.0"
}
}
Now the problem I am having is that when from my browser I put: localhost:5000 everything looks fine. I see my Hello World text. But when I am trying to go to a folder under the public such as localhost:5000/css/style.css I get the following error message.
Cannot GET /css/style.css
And here is my folder structure

Answer 1

If you want:
localhost:5000/css/style.css
to be served by:
app.use(express.static('public'));
Then, you need to make sure that style.css is in:
public/css/style.css
where public/css/style.css is evaluated relative to the current working directory.
You don't disclose your file hierarchy, but if localhost:5000/css/style.css isn't working, then apparently style.css isn't located properly in public/css/style.css or your public directory isn't in the proper place.
app.use(express.static('public')); tells express to look for requested files relative to the public directory. So a request for /css/style.css will be looked for at public/css/style.css.
Also, app.use(express.static('public')); assumes that the public directory you want it to look in is relative to the working directory when the app.use() statement is run so you need to either make sure that is also correct or you need to put an absolute path in the express.static() statement so you don't depend on the current working directory.