Express res.sendfile throwing forbidden error

Question

I have this code:

res.sendfile( \'../../temp/index.html\' )

However, it throws this error:

Error: Forbidden
at SendStream.e         


        

Answer 1

I believe it's because of the relative path; the "../" is considered malicious. Resolve the local path first, then call res.sendfile. You can resolve the path with path.resolve beforehand.

var path = require('path');
res.sendFile(path.resolve('temp/index.html'));

Answer 2

This answer gathers together the info from the other answers/comments.

It depends whether you want to include something relative to the process working directory (cwd) or the file directory. Both use the path.resolve function (put var path = require('path') at the top of the file.

• relative to cwd: path.resolve('../../some/path/to/file.txt');
• relative to file: path.resolve(__dirname+'../../some/path/to/file.txt');

From reading the link from @Joe's comment, it sounds like relative paths are a security risk if you accept user input for the path (e.g. sendfile('../.ssh/id_rsa') might be a hacker's first try).

Answer 3

The Express documentation suggests doing it a different way, and in my opinion it makes more sense later than the current solution.

res.sendFile('index.html', {root: './temp'});

The root option seems to set ./ as the root directory of your project. So I cannot fully tell where you file is in relation to the project root, but if your temp folder is there, you can set ./temp as the root for the file you're sending.