Serve homepage and static content from root

Question

In Golang, how do I serve static content out of the root directory while still having a root directory handler for serving the homepage.

Use the following simple web

Answer 1

Using Gorilla mux package :

r := mux.NewRouter()

//put your regular handlers here

//then comes root handler
r.HandleFunc("/", homePageHandler)
//if a path not found until now, e.g. "/image/tiny.png" 
//this will look at "./public/image/tiny.png" at filesystem
r.PathPrefix("/").Handler(http.FileServer(http.Dir("./public/")))

http.Handle("/", r)
http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)

Answer 2

One thing I thought of that might help you is that you can create your own ServeMux. I added to your example so that chttp is a ServeMux that you can have serve static files. The HomeHandler then checks to see if it should serve a file or not. I just check for a "." but you could do a lot of things. Just an idea, might not be what you are looking for.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
    "strings"
)   

var chttp = http.NewServeMux()

func main() {

    chttp.Handle("/", http.FileServer(http.Dir("./")))

    http.HandleFunc("/", HomeHandler) // homepage
    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}   

func HomeHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {

    if (strings.Contains(r.URL.Path, ".")) {
        chttp.ServeHTTP(w, r)
    } else {
        fmt.Fprintf(w, "HomeHandler")
    }   
} 

Answer 3

An alternative (not using ServeMux) solution is to serve explicitly each file located in the root directory. The idea behind is to keep the number of root-based files very small. sitemap.xml, favicon.ico, robots.txt are indeed mandated to be served out of the root :

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
)

func HomeHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    fmt.Fprintf(w, "HomeHandler")
}

func serveSingle(pattern string, filename string) {
    http.HandleFunc(pattern, func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        http.ServeFile(w, r, filename)
    })
}

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/", HomeHandler) // homepage

    // Mandatory root-based resources
    serveSingle("/sitemap.xml", "./sitemap.xml")
    serveSingle("/favicon.ico", "./favicon.ico")
    serveSingle("/robots.txt", "./robots.txt")

    // Normal resources
    http.Handle("/static", http.FileServer(http.Dir("./static/")))

    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

Please move all other resources (CSS, JS, etc.) to a proper subdirectory, e.g. /static/ .