What we are going to do today is Serving a static content without using Apache, nginx or IIS. What we need is creating Http server with expressjs. This post goes into how this can be achieved.
if you don’t have node js already installed you can Install & run your first application Nodejs.
Install express
Express is a nodejs framework that has great built in capabilities to serve static content.
Create a webserver directory to hold your application, and make that your working directory and then create www
$ mkdir webserver
$ cd webserver
$ mkdir www
create a file ‘app.js’
Now install Express in the webserver directory and save it in the dependencies list. For example:
$ npm install express
Let’s type some code
add the following code to app.js file, We use Visual studio code to edit the file:
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/www'));
app.listen(3000);
add index.html file to www folder:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Document</title>
<link href='/style.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
</head>
<body>
<h1> Serving static contents with expressjs app </h1>
<img src="/image.jpg" alt="image">
</body>
</html>
Add style.css file to www folder:
h1 {
background-color: rosybrown
}
then Add an image to www folder and name it image.jpg
Run the application
Run the application:
$ node app.js
The application starts a server and listens on port 3000 for connections. The app responds with “Welcome to express api” for requests to the root URL (/) or route.
load http://localhost:3000/ in a browser to see the output.
Alow contents to be cached
Now our http server is working, let’s add some functionalities like caching :
Modify you app.js file :
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/www', { maxAge: 3600000 }));
max-age property of the Cache-Control header is in milliseconds (3600000 =1 hour)
Save the file and run th application again
To stop the app Ctrl + C
Any files under the
wwwfolder will be server
**This is your static content web server working **