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

For a healthy increase of performance using node to serve static resources, I recommend using Buffet. It works similar to as a web application accelerator also known as a caching HTTP reverse proxy but it just loads the chosen directory into memory.

Buffet takes a fully-bufferred approach -- all files are fully loaded into memory when your app boots, so you will never feel the burn of the filesystem. In practice, this is immensely efficient. So much so that putting Varnish in front of your app might even make it slower! 

We use it on the codePile site and found an increase of ~700requests/sec to >4k requests/sec on a page that downloads 25 resources under a 1k concurrent user connection load.

Example:

var server = require('http').createServer();

var buffet = require('buffet')(root: './file'); 

 

server.on('request', function (req, res) {

  buffet(req, res, function () {

    buffet.notFound(req, res);

  });

});

 

server.listen(3000, function () {

  console.log('test server running on port 3000');

});