how do you send html with restify

Question

I want to send plain html instead of a json response for one of my routes in restify. I tried setting the contentType and header property of the response but it doesn't seem to set the contentType in the header (the browser tries to download the file rather than render it).

res.contentType = 'text/html';
res.header('Content-Type','text/html');
return res.send('<html><body>hello</body></html>');

score 29 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 30 '13 at 20:04

29

Quick way to manipulate headers without changing formatters for the whole server:

A restify response object has all the "raw" methods of a node ServerResponse on it as well.

var body = '<html><body>hello</body></html>';
res.writeHead(200, {
  'Content-Length': Buffer.byteLength(body),
  'Content-Type': 'text/html'
});
res.write(body);
res.end();

answered Mar 30 '13 at 20:04

serg

109,619
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2

Does this not need to end with a call to `next()` ? – Justin Aug 13 '15 at 18:37
This won't work if gzip encoding is used. It's better to use a custom response formatter and use res.send so the correct content-length is calculated. – JQ- Mar 02 '17 at 18:08
Nice. Thanks, I'm using Restify (Expressjs based on) alternative, and it works. – marcode_ely Feb 25 '21 at 17:46

score 12 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 21 '12 at 00:08

If you've overwritten the formatters in the restify configuration, you'll have to make sure you have a formatter for text/html. So, this is an example of a configuration that will send json and jsonp-style or html depending on the contentType specified on the response object (res):

var server = restify.createServer({
    formatters: {
        'application/json': function(req, res, body){
            if(req.params.callback){
                var callbackFunctionName = req.params.callback.replace(/[^A-Za-z0-9_\.]/g, '');
                return callbackFunctionName + "(" + JSON.stringify(body) + ");";
            } else {
                return JSON.stringify(body);
            }
        },
        'text/html': function(req, res, body){
            return body;
        }
    }
});

FWMI. You can re-assign the original formatter using restify's library. Replace line 3 with: `'application/json': require('restify/lib/formatters/json')` — Alwin Kesler, Jan 11 '18 at 02:56

score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 14 '15 at 18:27

12

Another option is to call

res.end('<html><body>hello</body></html>');

Instead of

res.send('<html><body>hello</body></html>');

answered Jun 14 '15 at 18:27

Eran Boudjnah

1,228
20
22

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 26 '17 at 16:31

It seems like the behaviour @dlawrence describes in his answer has changed since when the answer was posted. The way it works now (at least in Restify 4.x) is:

const app = restify.createServer(
  {
    formatters: {
      'text/html': function (req, res, body, cb) {
        cb(null, body)
    }
  }
})

how do you send html with restify

4 Answers4