I'm using Express and have my static files at a specific path and serve them trought static() middleware like that:
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
I also use bower and used to configure a .bowerrc file to install stuff in that static used path.
I was wondering if I could not redefine a second static middleware like that:
app.use('/bower', express.static('/bower_components'));
So I get rid of my .bowerrc file.
But it's not working, is this sort of thing possible or am I completely misleading?
Yes, you absolutely can do that. If the first argument to use is a string, you're mounting the middleware to a specific URL path.
It's probably not working because you're specifying an absolute path for the static middleware – did you really mean bower_components under the root directory /?
Related
I am new with nodejs and much more new with express module. I have a app setup like this;
The chart.js is my nodejs file. I am trying to make my js files and css file static by using app.use(express.static(-I didn't understand what i need to write here-)) in order to render my index.html properly but I don't know how to use and I did not understand the documentation. In the documentation they say coder able to use static like app.use(express.static('public')) but they don't mention about what is public, where it is in the project, what does it contain. Can someone please help mi about this situation? How does this express.static works and how can I make my files static?
NOTE: DO NOT PUT PRIVATE FILES INSIDE YOUR STATIC FOLDER.
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
here you see inside of express.static() function is the path of your static folder that will be going to access directly from the browser and you don't need to write their routes because that folder will give all the access to the public. like css,js files. and those files you will be able to access as its directory.
in the above picture, you have html, css and js files in public folder which is located on root folder of the application. you need to access those public static files which are not related to nodejs so it should be defined as static on your server node js code as : app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));. and it will get all the routes like:
http://localhost:3000/css/style.css
http://localhost:3000/javascript/script.js
http://localhost:3000/favicon.ico
http://localhost:3000/index.html
http://localhost:3000/robots.txt
you also can set prefix for those static routes. for that, you need to give prefix as: app.use('static_folder', express.static(__dirname + '/public')); then it will be looks like :
http://localhost:3000/static_folder/css/style.css
http://localhost:3000/static_folder/javascript/script.js
http://localhost:3000/static_folder/favicon.ico
http://localhost:3000/static_folder/index.html
http://localhost:3000/static_folder/robots.txt
I'm trying to serve static file uploaded using ExpressJS and NodeJS with Typescript but getting 404 error.
the file I want to read is ./src/data/uploads/test.txt and I'm trying to access it from web browser directly.
Note: When I do it in Javascript it worked but not in Typscript.
index.ts file (app entry point)
import express from 'express';
import bodyParser from 'body-parser';
import helmet from 'helmet';
import {cdg, config} from './utils';
import {Mongoose} from './db/monogdb';
import { setRoutes } from './routes/route.decorators';
import cors from 'cors';
import './routes';
const app = express();
app.use(helmet());
app.use(cors());
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.use('/ftp', express.static('data/uploads'));
setRoutes(app);
app.listen(config.server.port, () => {
cdg.konsole("Server connected! :: " + config.server.port + "!");
});
Is there a specific way to serve static file with Typescript ?
Here's how express.static() works. You are apparently missing one of these steps, but your question is short of the details to identify exactly which step is not correct.
First, you define an express.static() middleware that contains some parameters. In your case, you've defined this:
app.use('/ftp', express.static('data/uploads'));
There are four elements that determine how this works:
The /ftp that must be at the start of any URL for this middleware to match.
The incoming URL request and how it was formed by the browser based on how you specified it in your HTML.
The current working directory that is combined with data/uploads to make a full path reference or you could build your own absolute path and not depend upon the cwd.
The files in cwd + /data/uploads that express.static() will attempt to match to the path of the incoming URL.
Let's look into these further:
Your middleware will first only look at URLs that start with /ftp. And, then for any URL it sees that does start with /ftp, it should take the rest of the URL and append it to data/uploads and see it finds a matching file in your local file system. It will use the current working directory in your server process at the time of the request to try to resolve the relative path data/uploads. That current working directory (if you haven't programmatically changed it) will depend upon how your app was started.
So, if you started your app with node index.js, then the current working directory will be the directory where index.js is located and express static will be looking in the data/uploads sub-directory below where 'index.js` is.
Then, we need to look at how the HTML tag that specifies this static resource is specified.
Let's say this is an <img> tag for example. If you specify something like this:
<img src="/ftp/hello.jpg">
Then, the browser will create a request to your server for /ftp/hello.jpg. Since that does start with /ftp, your express.static() middleware will take the rest of the path /hello.jpg and append that to data/uploads and build a path that looks like this:
path.join(process.cwd(), 'data/uploads', '/hello.jpg')
And, it will look for that resulting file in your local file system. If it finds that file, then it will serve that file and return it as the response. If it doesn't find that exact file, then it will call next() and continue routing to your other route handlers.
There are a number of common mistakes (things that can go wrong):
You don't specify the correct URL in your web page that lines up with your express.static() middleware line (including the /ftp prefix that your middleware specifies).
Your middleware isn't quite pointing at the right directory in your file system so it never finds anything.
You are using relative URLs in your web page which the browser combines with the path of your web page causing it to request something different than you want. Static resource URLs in your web page should nearly always start with / so they are not dependent upon the path of the parent page.
The files aren't quite properly located in the file hierarchy you are pointing to with your middleware (often off by one level).
One other thing I will mention. Since you're using TypeScript, that means you have to compile/build your script into a regular .js script before it can be run. This will typically be in a different directory location.
This different directory location creates opportunities for you to not be referencing the proper directory where your static resources are, since they are probably located relative to your TypeScript files, not the built Javascript files that you're running (that depends upon your build script).
Again, if you show us where everything is in your file system (TypeScript files, built JS files, static resources) and what the HTML tag that references the static resource looks like, we can help you debug that more specifically.
In my case I solved my problem like this: in the parameter relative to the directory path I used path.resolve and in its first parameter I used __dirname as the first parameter and the relative path of the target directory as the second one.
app.get('/', express.static(path.resolve(__dirname, '../static/'))); –
i'm having issues running my node server on localhost.
right now it only allows me to run it with a static path:
app.get("/", function(req, res){
res.sendFile("/Users/name/Documents/_privat/dungeon/index.html");
});
of course that's not where i wanna go.
i tried many ways to embedd the dynamic path, this is my file-structure:
*dungeonapp
- main.html
- js
--client
---main.js (and others)
--server
---server.js
- style
--style.css
So if I run everything static my application runs on localhost, but it also won't load my css files neither the js files.
Where am i going wrong? all the regular path embedding didn't work like "/../index.html"
Express response sendFile() method has a second options argument where you can express your root path for path resolution. See docs for more information. You can use {root: __dirname} as second argument to sendFile() and file paths will be resolved relative to the javascript file that calls sendFile(). In your case with the directory structure indicated in your question the code on server.js would be:
app.get("/", function(req, res){
res.sendFile("../../main.html", {root: __dirname});
});
This way you can move your project to any folder and sendFile() will continue to work. I think you should reword your question because you are talking about absolute paths and not static paths.
Normally you would do something like have two subfolders in the root of your project, one for server code and one for client (i.e. web) code and then you can use app.use(express.static('<filepath>')) in your server code to serve the static client files.
As an example, in my project root I have 2 folders, one called app and one called web. In the main app.js, I have app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/../web/')); which serves the static content. Normally this would be the first use of app.use() so that none of the other routes need to be checked before your content is served.
I want to use the express static server configuration for implementing an static server:
app.configure(function() {
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
});
But I want to map the URL http://myhost/url1 to directory C:\dirA\dirB and http://myhost/url2 to directory C:\dirC
How can it be implemented using express.static?
This should work for you:
var serveStatic = require( "serve-static" );
app.use('/url1', serveStatic('c:\\dirA\\dirB'));
app.use('/url2', serveStatic('C:\\dirC'));
Take a look at the documentation for app.use().
Depending on how many directories you're planning to map this way, you could simply make symlinks for those directories in your public folder.
In Windows:
mklink /D c:\dirA\dirB public\url1
In Linux or OSX:
ln -s /dirA/dirB public/url1
Then your static assets server should serve from those directories transparently (I've never tested on Windows but I don't see why it wouldn't work).
Alternatively, if you wanted to include some kind of dynamic routing, you could write your own middleware to replace express.static which is actually connect.static under the hood. Take a look at static.js in the connect source and see how it's implemented, it should be fairly straightforward to write your own variation.
I'm trying to build a webapp where:
http://mydomain.com/static/x.png serves x.png as a static file using Connect's static middleware
http://mydomain.com/other_stuff does other stuff
My directory structure is
start_server.coffee
static/
x.png
In start_server.coffee I have:
app = connect()
app.use connect.staticCache()
app.use connect.static(__dirname + '/static')
app.use ...middleware that serves the dynamic parts of my app...
app.listen 80
When I try http://mydomain.com/static/x.png, the request bypasses the static server and gets routed to the rest of my app. I stepped through the code in a debugger and it looks like static is trying to lookup static/static/x.png instead of static/x.png.
I was able to get it working by changing connect.static(_dirname + '/static') to connect.static(_dirname), but now it will serve stuff that's not in the static directory which is not good!
What's the cleanest way of doing what I'm trying to do? I could probably use Express's routing functionality, but I don't particularly want to use Express unless I have to, since the rest of my app handles routing its own way.
Thanks!
So the issue is the mismatch between your URL paths and your filesystem layout. There are 2 easy-peasy get-on-with-your-life solutions.
Remove "static/" from your URLs. The static middleware will only serve files under the static directory but the URLs won't include the word "static".
Do this: mkdir public && mv static public. Leave the public directory empty other than the static subdirectory. Now your URLs can stay the same and in your code you need app.use connect.static(__dirname + '/public').
Now this is what the static middleware provides out of the box. The URLs have to map simply to the filesystem. This is why it "just works" and is simple.
If you really want to have static/ in your URL but not map to a directory underneath your static root, add a middleware before the static middleware that alters req.path to remove the leading "/static", then call next() and I think that will trick the static middleware into doing what you want.