Using node.js as a simple web server

Question

I want to run a very simple HTTP server. Every GET request to example.com should get index.html served to it but as a regular HTML page (i.e., same

Answer 1

I found a interesting library on npm that might be of some use to you. It's called mime(npm install mime or https://github.com/broofa/node-mime) and it can determine the mime type of a file. Here's an example of a webserver I wrote using it:

var mime = require("mime"),http = require("http"),fs = require("fs");
http.createServer(function (req, resp) {
path  = unescape(__dirname + req.url)
var code = 200
 if(fs.existsSync(path)) {
    if(fs.lstatSync(path).isDirectory()) {
        if(fs.existsSync(path+"index.html")) {
        path += "index.html"
        } else {
            code = 403
            resp.writeHead(code, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
            resp.end(code+" "+http.STATUS_CODES[code]+" "+req.url);
        }
    }
    resp.writeHead(code, {"Content-Type": mime.lookup(path)})
    fs.readFile(path, function (e, r) {
    resp.end(r);

})
} else {
    code = 404
    resp.writeHead(code, {"Content-Type":"text/plain"});
    resp.end(code+" "+http.STATUS_CODES[code]+" "+req.url);
}
console.log("GET "+code+" "+http.STATUS_CODES[code]+" "+req.url)
}).listen(9000,"localhost");
console.log("Listening at http://localhost:9000")

This will serve any regular text or image file (.html, .css, .js, .pdf, .jpg, .png, .m4a and .mp3 are the extensions I've tested, but it theory it should work for everything)

Developer Notes

Here is an example of output that I got with it:

Listening at http://localhost:9000
GET 200 OK /cloud
GET 404 Not Found /cloud/favicon.ico
GET 200 OK /cloud/icon.png
GET 200 OK /
GET 200 OK /501.png
GET 200 OK /cloud/manifest.json
GET 200 OK /config.log
GET 200 OK /export1.png
GET 200 OK /Chrome3DGlasses.pdf
GET 200 OK /cloud
GET 200 OK /-1
GET 200 OK /Delta-Vs_for_inner_Solar_System.svg

Notice the unescape function in the path construction. This is to allow for filenames with spaces and encoded characters.