Using node.js as a simple web server

Question

I want to run a very simple HTTP server. Every GET request to example.com should get index.html served to it but as a regular HTML page (i.e., same

Answer 1

You don't need express. You don't need connect. Node.js does http NATIVELY. All you need to do is return a file dependent on the request:

var http = require('http')
var url = require('url')
var fs = require('fs')

http.createServer(function (request, response) {
    var requestUrl = url.parse(request.url)    
    response.writeHead(200)
    fs.createReadStream(requestUrl.pathname).pipe(response)  // do NOT use fs's sync methods ANYWHERE on production (e.g readFileSync) 
}).listen(9615)    

A more full example that ensures requests can't access files underneath a base-directory, and does proper error handling:

var http = require('http')
var url = require('url')
var fs = require('fs')
var path = require('path')
var baseDirectory = __dirname   // or whatever base directory you want

var port = 9615

http.createServer(function (request, response) {
    try {
        var requestUrl = url.parse(request.url)

        // need to use path.normalize so people can't access directories underneath baseDirectory
        var fsPath = baseDirectory+path.normalize(requestUrl.pathname)

        var fileStream = fs.createReadStream(fsPath)
        fileStream.pipe(response)
        fileStream.on('open', function() {
             response.writeHead(200)
        })
        fileStream.on('error',function(e) {
             response.writeHead(404)     // assume the file doesn't exist
             response.end()
        })
   } catch(e) {
        response.writeHead(500)
        response.end()     // end the response so browsers don't hang
        console.log(e.stack)
   }
}).listen(port)

console.log("listening on port "+port)