how to generate a sitemap in expressjs - node.js

Question

I downloaded my XML sitemap from the sitemap xml generator website. I placed my sitemap.xml on my public directory but when I tried to submit the sitemap.xml into google console i received the following error: General HTTP error: 404 not found
HTTP Error: 404So i codedapp.get('/sitemap.xml', function( req, res, next ) {
res.header('Content-Type', 'text/xml');
res.render( 'sitemap' );
)};And when i navigate to the 'website/sitemap.xml' I am getting the following error: This page contains the following errors:
error on line 1 at column 42: Specification mandate value for attribute itemscope
Thanks for your help

Answer 1

Generate your sitemap.xml file using a tool like https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
upload the sitemap.xml in your project
then add this to your .js file:
router.get('/sitemap.xml', function(req, res) {
res.sendFile('YOUR_PATH/sitemap.xml');
});
make sure you change YOUR_PATH for the actual path where your sitemap.xml file is.

Answer 2

Sitemaps do not have to be XML documents. A simple text file with URLs is all you need so something like below works fine. In the following example, fetchMyUrls() would be a function/method that asynchronously gets and returns the available URLs as an array of strings (URL strings).
async function index (req, res){
return fetchMyUrls().then((urls) => {
var str = '';
for (var url of urls) {
str = str + url + '\n';
}
res.type('text/plain');
return res.send(str);
});
}

Answer 3

For those looking for a way to create the XML dynamically on your code and don't want to use another library nor have a file stored in the public folder, you can use this:
app.get('/sitemap.xml', async function(req, res, next){
let xml_content = [
'<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>',
'<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">',
' <url>',
' <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>',
' <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>',
' </url>',
'</urlset>'
]
res.set('Content-Type', 'text/xml')
res.send(xml_content.join('\n'))
})

Answer 4

In my NodeJS express project and without installing any library I was able to add this to my routes with my preferred view engine (handlebar).
export const routes: RouteMapper[] = [
{
"/sitemap.xml": [
{
method: "get",
handler: (req, res) =>
res.sendFile("/src/views/sitemap.xml", { root: "." }),
},
],
},
];
Cheers!

Answer 5

The best way is to create a script that would automatically generate a sitemap. In a lot of cases, the URLs should be dynamic based on data from the database.
Great package for creating the sitemap in Express is sitemap package:
STEP 1
Create a middleware that will generate the sitemap dynamically and then cache it for each next call to the server. We can extract logic in separate file called sitemap_generator.js for example, and we can define and export generate_sitemap middleware for it:
const { SitemapStream, streamToPromise } = require('sitemap');
const { Readable } = require('stream');
let sitemap;
const generate_sitemap = async (req, res, next) => {
res.header('Content-Type', 'application/xml');
if (sitemap) return res.status(200).send(sitemap); // If we have a cached entry send it
let changefreq = 'weekly';
try {
let links = [
{ url: '', changefreq, priority: 1 },
{ url: 'aboutus', changefreq, priority: 0.9 },
{ url: 'blog', changefreq },
{ url: 'login', changefreq },
{ url: 'register', changefreq },
];
// Additionally, you can do database query and add more dynamic URLs to the "links" array.
const stream = new SitemapStream({ hostname: 'https://example.com', lastmodDateOnly: true })
return streamToPromise(Readable.from(links).pipe(stream)).then((data) => {
sitemap = data; // Cache the generated sitemap
stream.end();
return res.status(200).send(data.toString())
});
} catch (error) {
return res.status(500).end();
}
}
module.exports = { generate_sitemap };
STEP 2
Import generate_sitemap middleware from sitemap_generator.js in your server configuration file and mound it to the /sitemap.xml endpoint:
const { generate_sitemap } = require('./sitemap_generator');
...
app.get('/sitemap.xml', generate_sitemap);
That's it. Your sitemap should be available on /sitemap.xml endpoint now so navigate in the browser to that endpoint and check if it is there.