Making a specific directory browsable in Express.js

Question

I have a directory with some images in it that I want to make viewable in a browser.

This directory lives on my server at /public/images

Inside /public I also have other directories that I do not want to make public, hence making the entire /public directory viewable is not the solution.

How can I using the connect directory middleware make just my /public/images browsable?

Using the solution described here makes everything in /public viewable and trying the following doesn't work :

    app.use(exp.static(__dirname + '/public'));
    app.use(exp.static(__dirname + '/public/images'));
    app.use(exp.directory(__dirname + '/public/images'));

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 11 '14 at 14:11

9

You have to mount your routes to a special path, like

app.use('/', exp.static(__dirname + '/public'));
app.use('/images', exp.static(__dirname + '/public/images'));
app.use('/images',exp.directory(__dirname + '/public/images'));

This way you can access the content of /public with the url / and the content of /public/image with the url /images

edited Jun 11 '14 at 14:11

Zong

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answered Jul 17 '12 at 09:54

I tried this while wanting to make a root-level directory available and it didn't work. I just added a folder called /ndn as a sibling to /public and I want to use a test.js script in a client view file from /views where a script src points to "/ndn/test.js" - how? – Cody Feb 17 '13 at 11:31
@Cody at least with express@3.0.0 this works like a charm - just allow access to the root level directory with express static middleware. Maybe there's a bug in your code? – Feb 17 '13 at 12:21
Please note that express.directory is no longer bundled hence supported in Express ^4.X.X. You can use serve-index for it. – danish.ahmad Oct 22 '20 at 11:16

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 16 '18 at 17:53

1

Express 4:

npm install serve-index

--

var serveIndex = require('serve-index');

app.use('/images', express.static(__dirname + '/public/images'), serveIndex(__dirname + '/public/images'));

answered Mar 16 '18 at 17:53

brycejl

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Making a specific directory browsable in Express.js

2 Answers2