Serving static files with restify

Question

I am learning to use Node.js. Currently, I have a folder structure that looks like the following:

index.html
server.js
client
  index.html
  subs
    index.html
    page.html
res
  css
    style.css
  img
    profile.png
  js
    page.js
    jquery.min.js

server.js is my webserver code. I run this from a command-line using node server.js. The contents of that file are:

var restify = require('restify');

var server = restify.createServer({
    name: 'Test App',
    version: '1.0.0'
});

server.use(restify.acceptParser(server.acceptable));
server.use(restify.queryParser());
server.use(restify.bodyParser());

server.get('/echo/:name', function (req, res, next) {
    res.send(req.params);
    return next();
});

server.listen(2000, function () {
    console.log('%s running on %s', server.name, server.url);
});

As you can see, this server relies on RESTIFY. I've been told I must use RESTIFY. However, I can't figure out how to serve static files. For instance, how do I server the *.html, *.css, *.png, and *.js files in my app?

Thank you!

Answer 1

From the documentation:

server.get(/\/docs\/public\/?.*/, restify.plugins.serveStatic({
  directory: './public'
}));

But this will search files in the ./public/docs/public/ directory.
If you want to not append request path to it, use appendRequestPath: false option.

I prefer to use __dirname key here:

server.get(/\/public\/?.*/, restify.plugins.serveStatic({
    directory: __dirname 
}));

The value of __dirname is equal to script file directory path, which assumed to be also a folder, where is public directory.

And now we map all /public/.* urls to ./public/ directory.

---

Now also exists serveStaticFiles plugin:

server.get('/public/*', // don't forget the `/*`
     restify.plugins.serveStaticFiles('./doc/v1')
); // GET /public/index.html -> ./doc/v1/index.html file