Hello in this tutorial, we will understand how to serve static files on an Express.js server. There are two ways to serve static files in express:
- Serving a single file through the HTTP response by configuring the path to the resource
- Serving multiple files from the public directory
In this tutorial, we will go over the recommended approach which is serving multiple files from the public directory named assets.
1. Introduction
To set up Node.js on windows you will need to download the installer from this link. Click on the installer (also include the NPM package manager) for your platform and run the installer to start with the Node.js setup wizard. Follow the wizard steps and click on Finish when it is done. If everything goes well you can navigate to the command prompt to verify if the installation was successful as shown in Fig. 1.
2. Serving static files in Express.js
To set up the Express.js server, we will need to navigate a path where our project will reside. For programming stuff, I am using Visual Studio Code as my preferred IDE. You’re free to choose the IDE of your choice.
2.1 Setting up dependencies
Navigate to a directory and run npm init -y to create a package.json file. This file holds the metadata relevant to the project and is used for managing the project dependencies, script, version, etc. Add the following code to the file wherein we will specify the dependencies.
package.json
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 | { "name": "expressjs-static-files", "version": "1.0.0", "description": "", "main": "app.js", "scripts": { "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1", "start": "node app.js" }, "keywords": [], "author": "", "license": "ISC", "dependencies": { "express": "^4.17.1" }, "devDependencies": { "nodemon": "^2.0.7" }} |
To download the dependencies navigate to the directory path containing the file and use the npm install command. If everything goes well the dependencies will be loaded inside the node_modules folder and you are good to go with the further steps.
2.2 Creating an Express server
Add the following code to the app.js file and set the folder (named assets) containing the files. We will call app.use(…) method to use a middleware function in Express. express.static(…) method finds and returns the static files from the specified root directory.
app.js
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 | // base setupconst express = require('express');const app = express();const port = 10091;// setting up the public directoryapp.use('/public', express.static('assets'));// starting the serverapp.listen(port, () => { console.log(`Application listening on port ${port}`)}); |
2.3 Build a web page
Create an HTML file in the assets directory. Populate the file with HTML code and you are free to change the code as per your wish.
home.html
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 | <!DOCTYPE><html lang="en"><head> <title>Index</title> <style> .nodejs { height: 250px; width: auto; } </style></head><body><h2>Hello world!<span>👋</span></h2><img alt="node" class="nodejs" src="./nodejs.jpg"></body></html> |
3. Run the Application
To launch the application navigate the project directory and enter the following command as shown in Fig. 2. If everything goes well the application will be started successfully on port number 10091.
4. Project Demo
When the application is started, open the browser and navigate to http://localhost:10091/public/home.html. You will see the created HTML file.
That is all for this tutorial and I hope the article served you with whatever you were looking for. Happy Learning and do not forget to share!
5. Summary
In this tutorial, we learned:
- Steps to setup Node.js
- Sample programming to serve static files on an Express.js server
You can download the source code of this tutorial from the Downloads section.
6. Download the Project
This was a programming tutorial on serving static files on an Express.js server.
You can download the full source code of this example here: Serving static files in Express.js
