Node.js + Express: What do I have to serve the specific folder's path to express.static?

Question

I wrote the following code:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();

app.use('/', express.static(__dirname ));

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
  res.sendFile('./dist/index.html');
});


app.listen(3000, function() {
  console.log("Listening on port 3000");
});

which doesn't work. When open the browser and go to "localhost:3000" I get the error:

path must be absolute or specify root to res.sendFile

Of course the once I fix the line that starts with "app.use..." to:

app.use('/', express.static(__dirname + "./dist"));

then everything works right.

Can you please explain why? What's wrong with giving "express.static" a path of a parent folder of the direct folder of the file sent?

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

Try changing the order. Instead of:

app.use('/', express.static(__dirname ));

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
  res.sendFile('./dist/index.html');
});

Try:

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
  res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, './dist/index.html'));
});

app.use('/', express.static(__dirname));
// OR:
app.use('/', express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'dist')));

Plus use path.join() to join paths. You need to require path first:

var path = require('path');

See this answer for more info on serving static files and why path.join is important:

How to serve an image using nodejs

Now, your problem was not about express.static but about res.sendFile. When you changed express.static path to a different one, then the file you previously wanted to send with res.sendFile was probably found by express.static and the handler with res.sendFile was not run at all. Before the change, the express.static wasn't finding the index.html file and was passing the request to the next handler - which had a bad res.sendFile invocation. That's why it appeared to solve the problem with the error, because the code causing the error was no longer called.

Node.js + Express: What do I have to serve the specific folder's path to express.static?

1 Answers1