Making a Web Server | Node Cookbook

Serving static files

If we have information stored on disk that we want to serve as web content, we can use the fs (filesystem) module to load our content and pass it through the createServer callback. This is a basic conceptual starting point for serving static files. As we will learn in the following recipes there are much more efficient solutions.

Getting ready

We'll need some files to serve. Let's create a directory named content, containing the following three files:

index.html:

<html>
<head>
<title>Yay Node!</title>
<link rel=stylesheet href=styles.css type=text/css>
<script src=script.js type=text/javascript></script>
</head>
<body>
<span id=yay>Yay!</span>
</body>
</html>

script.js:

window.onload=function() {alert('Yay Node!');};

styles.css:

#yay {font-size:5em;background:blue;color:yellow;padding:0.5em}

How to do it...

As in the previous recipe, we'll be using the core modules http and path. We'll also need to access the filesystem, so we'll require the fs module too. Let's create our server:

var http = require('http');
var path = require('path');
var fs = require('fs');
http.createServer(function (request, response) {
var lookup = path.basename(decodeURI(request.url)) || 'index.html',
f = 'content/' + lookup;
fs.exists(f, function (exists) {
console.log(exists ? lookup + " is there" : lookup + " doesn't exist");
});
}).listen(8080);

If we haven't already, we can initialize our server.js file:

hotnode server.js

Try loading localhost:8080/foo and the console will say foo doesn't exist, because it doesn't. localhost:8080/script.js will tell us script.js is there, because it is. Before we can save a file, we are supposed to let the client know the content-type, which we can determine from the file extensions. So let's make a quick map using an object:

var mimeTypes = {
'.js' : 'text/javascript',
'.html': 'text/html',
'.css' : 'text/css'
};

We could extend our mimeTypes map later to support more types.

Note

Modern browsers may be able to interpret certain mime types (such as text/javascript) without the server sending a content-type header. However, older browsers or less common mime types will rely upon the correct content-type header being sent from the server.

Remember to place mimeTypes outside the server callback since we don't want to initialize the same object on every client request. If the requested file exists, we can convert our file extension into content-type by feeding path.extname into mimeTypes and then passing our retrieved content-type to response.writeHead. If the requested file doesn't exist, we'll write out a 404 and end the response.

//requires variables, mimeType object...
http.createServer(function (request, response) {
var lookup = path.basename(decodeURI(request.url)) || 'index.html',
f = 'content/' + lookup;
fs.exists(f, function (exists) {
if (exists) {
fs.readFile(f, function (err, data) {
if (err) { response.writeHead(500);
response.end('Server Error!'); return; }
var headers = {'Content-type': mimeTypes[path. extname(lookup)]};
response.writeHead(200, headers);
response.end(data);
});
return;
}
response.writeHead(404); //no such file found!
response.end();
});
}).listen(8080);

At the moment, there is still no content sent to the client. We have to get this content from our file, so we wrap the response handling in an fs.readFile method callback.

//http.createServer, inside fs.exists:
if (exists) {
fs.readFile(f, function(err, data) {

var headers={'Content-type': mimeTypes[path.extname(lookup)]};
response.writeHead(200, headers);
response.end(data);
});
return;
}

Before we finish, let's apply some error handling to our fs.readFile callback as follows:

//requires variables, mimeType object...
//http.createServer, fs.exists, inside if(exists):
fs.readFile(f, function(err, data) {
if (err) {response.writeHead(500); response.end('Server Error!'); return; }

var headers = {'Content-type': mimeTypes[path.extname(lookup)]};
response.writeHead(200, headers);
response.end(data);
});
return;
}

Notice that return stays outside the fs.readFile callback. We are returning from the fs.exists callback to prevent further code execution (for example, sending 404). Placing a return in an if statement is similar to using an else branch. However, the if return pattern is generally preferable to using if else in Node, as it eliminates yet another set of curly braces.

So now we can navigate to localhost:8080 which will serve our index.html file. The index.html file makes calls to our script.js and styles.css files, which our server also delivers with appropriate mime types. The result can be seen in the following screenshot:

This recipe serves to illustrate the fundamentals of serving static files. Remember, this is not an efficient solution! In a real-world situation, we don't want to make an I/O call every time a request hits the server, this is very costly especially with larger files. In the following recipes, we'll learn better ways to serve static files.

How it works...

Our script creates a server and declares a variable called lookup. We assign a value to lookup using the double pipe (||) or operator. This defines a default route if path.basename is empty. Then we pass lookup to a new variable that we named f in order to prepend our content directory to the intended filename. Next we run f through the fs.exists method and check the exist parameter in our callback to see if the file is there. If the file exists we read it asynchronously using fs.readFile. If there is a problem accessing the file, we write a 500 server error, end the response, and return from the fs.readFile callback. We can test the error-handling functionality by removing read permissions from index.html.

chmod -r index.html

Doing so will cause the server to throw the 500 server error status code. To set things right again run the following command:

chmod +r index.html

As long as we can access the file, we grab content-type using our handy mimeTypes mapping object, write the headers, end the response with data loaded from the file, and finally return from the function. If the requested file does not exist, we bypass all this logic, write a 404, and end the response.

There's more...

Here's something to watch out for...

The favicon gotcha

When using a browser to test our server, sometimes an unexpected server hit can be observed. This is the browser requesting the default favicon.ico icon file that servers can provide. Apart from the initial confusion of seeing additional hits, this is usually not a problem. If the favicon request begins to interfere, we can handle it like this:

if (request.url === '/favicon.ico') {
response.end();
return;
}

If we wanted to be more polite to the client, we could also inform it of a 404 by using response.writeHead(404) before issuing response.end.

Node Cookbook

By : David Mark Clements

Node Cookbook

By: David Mark Clements

Overview of this book

Serving static files

Getting ready

How to do it...

Note

How it works...

There's more...

The favicon gotcha

See also

Node Cookbook

By : David Mark Clements

Node Cookbook

By: David Mark Clements

Overview of this book

Serving static files

Getting ready

How to do it...

Note

How it works...

There's more...

The favicon gotcha

See also

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