javascript - What's the simplest way to serve static files using express?

Question

I'm using a rather ugly approach:

var app = require('express')(),
    server = require('http').createServer(app),
    fs = require('fs');
server.listen(80);

path = "/Users/my/path/";

var served_files = {};
["myfile1.html","myfile2.html","myfile3.html"].forEach(function(file){
    served_files["/"+file] = fs.readFileSync(path+file,"utf8");
});

app.use(function(req,res){
    if (served_files[req.path]) 
        res.send(files[req.path]);
});

What's the proper way to do it?

Answer 1

Express has a built in middleware for this. It's part of connect, which express is built on. The middleware itself uses send.

// just add the middleware to your app stack via `use`
app.use(express.static(yourpath));

In answer to your comment, no, there is no way to manually select files. Though by default the middleware will ignore folders prefixed with ., so for example a folder named .hidden would not be served.

To hide files or folders manually, you could insert your own middleware before static to filter out paths before the request reaches it. The following would prevent serving any files from folders named hidden:

app.use(function(req, res, next) {
  if (//hidden/*/.test(req.path)) {
    return res.send(404, "Not Found"); // or 403, etc
  };
  next();
});
app.use(express.static(__dirname+"/public"));