Node.js quick file server (static files over HTTP)

Question

Is there Node.js ready-to-use tool (installed with npm), that would help me expose folder content as file server over HTTP.

Example, if I have

Answer 1

I haven't had much luck with any of the answers on this page, however, below seemed to do the trick.

Add a server.js file with the following content:

const express = require('express')
const path = require('path')
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000
const app = express()

// serve static assets normally
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/dist'))

// handle every other route with index.html, which will contain
// a script tag to your application's JavaScript file(s).
app.get('*', function (request, response){
  response.sendFile(path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist', 'index.html'))
})

app.listen(port)
console.log("server started on port " + port)

Also make sure that you require express. Run yarn add express --save or npm install express --save depending on your setup (I can recommend yarn it's pretty fast).

You may change dist to whatever folder you are serving your content is. For my simple project, I wasn't serving from any folder, so I simply removed the dist filename.

Then you may run node server.js. As I had to upload my project to a Heroku server, I needed to add the following to my package.json file:

  "scripts": {
    "start": "node server.js"
  }