Using pipe() in Node.js net

Question

I\'m having trouble wrapping my head around the pipe function shown in several Node.js examples for the net module.

var net = require(\'net\');
         


        

Answer 1

Consider the following request handler

var server = http.createServer(function(req, res){
     console.log('Request for ' + req.url + ' by method ' + req.method);
    if(req.method == 'GET'){
        var fileurl;
        if(req.url == '/')fileurl = '/index.html';
        else {
            fileurl = req.url;
        }
    }
    var filePath = path.resolve('./public'+fileurl);
    var fileExt = path.extname(filePath);
    if(fileExt == '.html'){
          fs.exists(filePath, function(exists){
        if(!exists){
          res.writeHead(404, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
          res.end('
Error 404' + filePath + 'not found 
');
          //the end() method sends content of the response to the client
          //and signals to the server that the response has been sent
          //completely
          return;
        }
        res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type':'text/html'});
        fs.createReadStream(filePath).pipe(res);
      })
    }
}

The fs.createReadStream method reads the file in the given file path (public/index.html) and pipe() writes it to the response (res) for client's view.