display html page with node js

Question

This is my first time with node js  I get it to display the index html  but it doesn t display the images on the site or anything else  it ONLY shows the basic html stuff  Here s how I set it up  There s no apache  php or anything else on the server  just ubuntu  proftp and node and curl and the other dependencies   I made the main directory for the node files  var nodeFiles and the directory for the html site files is  var nodeFiles www so for my node server file I did it like this   var http   require  http        fs   require  fs    fs readFile   var nodeFiles www index html   function  err  html        if  err            throw err                    http createServer function request  response              response writeHeader 200    Content-Type    text html               response write html             response end             listen 80         this works  but it ONLY shows the index html file and NOTHING attached to it  so no images  no  effects or anything that the html file should display  The files and directories are all correct  I ve double checked and the permissions of the folders are correct  So what else do I have to do to get node to display the rest of the site  I hope I ve explained my self correctly  I was told this is the place to ask development questions  Thank you for taking the time to read this

User · Answer

If your goal is to simply display some static files you can use the Connect package. I have had some success (I'm still pretty new to NodeJS myself), using it and the twitter bootstrap API in combination.

at the command line

:\> cd <path you wish your server to reside>
:\> npm install connect

Then in a file (I named) Server.js

var connect = require('connect'),
   http = require('http');
connect()
   .use(connect.static('<pathyouwishtoserve>'))
   .use(connect.directory('<pathyouwishtoserve>'))
   .listen(8080);

Finally

:\>node Server.js

Caveats:

If you don't want to display the directory contents, exclude the .use(connect.directory line.

So I created a folder called "server" placed index.html in the folder and the bootstrap API in the same folder. Then when you access the computers IP:8080 it's automagically going to use the index.html file.

If you want to use port 80 (so just going to http://, and you don't have to type in :8080 or some other port). you'll need to start node with sudo, I'm not sure of the security implications but if you're just using it for an internal network, I don't personally think it's a big deal. Exposing to the outside world is another story.

Update 1/28/2014:

I haven't had to do the following on my latest versions of things, so try it out like above first, if it doesn't work (and you read the errors complaining it can't find nodejs), go ahead and possibly try the below.

End Update

Additionally when running in ubuntu I ran into a problem using nodejs as the name (with NPM), if you're having this problem, I recommend using an alias or something to "rename" nodejs to node.

Commands I used (for better or worse):

Create a new file called node

:\>gedit /usr/local/bin/node
#!/bin/bash
exec /nodejs "$@"

sudo chmod -x /usr/local/bin/node

That ought to make

node Server.js

work just fine

User · Answer

Check this basic code to setup html server  its work for me     var http   require  http        fs   require  fs      fs readFile    index html   function  err  html        if  err            throw err                    http createServer function request  response              response writeHeader 200    Content-Type    text html               response write html             response end             listen 8000

User · Answer

This did the trick for me   var express   require  express    app   express     app use      express static   dirname          app listen 8080

User · Answer

but it ONLY shows the index html file and NOTHING attached to it  so no images     no effects or anything that the html file should display     That s because in your program that s the only thing that you return to the browser regardless of what the request looks like   You can take a look at a more complete example that will return the correct files for the most common web pages  HTML  JPG  CSS  JS  in here https   gist github com hectorcorrea 2573391  Also  take a look at this blog post that I wrote on how to get started with node  I think it might clarify a few things for you  http   hectorcorrea com blog introduction-to-node-js

[node.js] display html page with node.js

Update 1/28/2014:

End Update

Examples related to node.js