Question
Can't Serve Static Files using Node.js over port 3000
- Posted on May 16, 2014
Asked by tony.sziklai
This may be an insanely stupid question, even for a node.js newbie. I set up a droplet running 64-bit Ubuntu and installed all of the requisite Node.js packages. I am building a chatroom application using the Node.js in Action book. For this project, I created an HTTP server for serving static content. For some reason, I am able to hit the server over port 3000 (and get a 404 error message), but I can’t seem to serve the static content that I created in the public directory (i.e. index.html file). Below is the server and the index.html file. Can anyone give me a clue why the content is not being served? Assume all the files are in their correct directory locations on the server.
Server:
var http = require(‘http’); var fs = require(‘fs’); var path = require(‘path’); var mime = require(‘mime’); var cache = {};
function send404(response) { response.writeHead(404,{‘Content-Type’: ‘text/plain’}); response.write(‘Error 404: resource not found.’); response.end(); } function sendFile(response, filePath, fileContents) { response.writeHead( 200, {“content-type”: mime.lookup(path.basename(filepath))} ); response.end(fileContents); }
function serveStatic(response, cache, absPath) { if (cache[absPath]) { sendFile(response, absPath, cache[absPath]); } else { fs.exists(absPath, function(exists) { if (exists) { fs.readFile(absPath, function(err, data) { if (err) { send404(response); } else { cache[absPath] = data; sendFile(response, absPath, data); } }); } else { send404(response); } }); } }
var server = http.createServer(function(request,response) { var filePath = false; if (request.url == ‘/’) { filepath = ‘public/index.html’; } else { filePath = ‘public’ + request.url; } var absPath = ‘./’ + filePath; serveStatic(response, cache, absPath); });
server.listen(3000, function() { console.log(“Server listening on port 3000.”); });
Index.html file
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang=“en”> <head> <title>Chat</title> <link rel=“stylesheet” href=“/stylesheets/style.css”><link> </head> <body> <div id=“content”> <div id=“room”></div> <div id=“room-list”></div> <div id=“messages”></div>
<<form id=“send-form”> <input id=“send-message” /> <input id=“send-button” type=“submit” value=“Send” />
<div id='help'>
Chat commands:
<ul>
<li>Change nickname: <code>/nick [username]</code></li>
<li>Join/create room: <code>/join [room name] </code></li>
</ul>
</div>
</form> </div>
<script src=“socket.io/socket.io.js” type=“text/javascript”></script> <script src=“http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.0.min.js"type="text/javascript”></script> <script src=“/javascripts/chat.js” type=“text/javascript”></script> <script src=“/javascripts/chat_ui.js” type=“text/javascript”></script> </body> </html>
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Thanks for this ressources! Check this course it’s straight to point and it gives you all the keys to a good start for a complete masteration of node.js by taking all the power of it. https://www.udemy.com/nodejs-tutorial-from-scratch-by-examples/
Unfortunately, even though I made the fix, the problem still persists. It was such a glaring issue, I was sure it would fix the problem, but no change. When I try to access my chatroom page from http://ip address:3000, I still get my 404 error. I looked at file permissions, cleared cache and even rebooted my droplet, but no change. Could this be a node thing? Note that I run my node server using the command nodejs instead of just node. Not sure if that is a thing or not. Very puzzling.
No problem! I think we’ve all spent embarrassingly long amounts of time debugging things in the past only to find out that that we misspelled something.