Using node.js as a simple web server

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I want to run a very simple HTTP server. Every GET request to example.com should get index.htmlserved to it but as a regular HTML page (i.e., same experience as when you read normal web pages).

Using the code below, I can read the content of index.html. How do I serve index.html as a regular web page?

var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');
var index = fs.readFileSync('index.html');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  res.end(index);
}).listen(9615);

One suggestion below is complicated and requires me to write a get line for each resource (CSS, JavaScript, images) file I want to use.

How can I serve a single HTML page with some images, CSS and JavaScript?

manpreet 2 years ago

You can use Connect and ServeStatic with Node.js for this:

1. Install connect and serve-static with NPM

   $ npm install connect serve-static

2. Create server.js file with this content:

   var connect = require('connect');
   var serveStatic = require('serve-static');
   connect().use(serveStatic(__dirname)).listen(8080, function(){
       console.log('Server running on 8080...');
   });

3. Run with Node.js

   $ node server.js

You can now go to http://localhost:8080/yourfile.html