Serving static files in Express without an IP adress

Question

I have the following code, for example, throughout my template files:

<link href="http://localhost:3000/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">

This forces me to change the IP address from http://localhost:3000 to the web server IP address whenever I launch the website. As you can imagine, there are a lot of template files for the whole site. I have written scripts that can search-and-replace the IP instances in the project's template files and I'd like to avoid that if I can.

I'd like to keep the following format:

<link href="css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet">

Notice it is independent of the origin. I'd hope there was middlewear that Express could use the current location of the server to serve the files.

I am currently using this code in my server.js file:

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname ,'/v1/public/')));

And works great if I specify the host in the template files. I haven't found any resources online that do what I want to do easily.

I think you want to set the port differently? http://stackoverflow.com/a/17004592/3662110 — jmargolisvt, Mar 28 '16 at 21:12
@SLaks As stated in the post, I'd have to manually or write a script to autonomously replace the absolute path when I launch the server. — Dan, Mar 28 '16 at 21:14

Arbel · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-28T21:31:59.460

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If the header is a template file, why don't you pass the full url as a variable to the template? You can construct the url at app level by something like this:

var baseUrl = req.protocol + '://' + req.get('host');

and pass baseUrl to your header template and prefix the paths at run-time.

edited Mar 28 '16 at 21:31

answered Mar 28 '16 at 21:14

Arbel

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This solution is practical and exceptionally effective. **edit:** For future developers: `req.get('host')` also includes the port and colon in the url returned string. No need to append it. Use exactly as Arbel prescribed. – Dan Mar 29 '16 at 01:37

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 28 '16 at 21:13

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Try:

href="http://localhost:3000/v1/public/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet"

or relative:

href="./v1/public/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet"

Your static folder is the folder path where the static resources will be served.

answered Mar 28 '16 at 21:13

Aleksandrenko

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Serving static files in Express without an IP adress

2 Answers2