basic-static

Basic static file serving for use with Node's http.createServer.

Installation

npm install basic-static

Examples

const basicStatic = require('basic-static');
const serveStatic = basicStatic({rootDir: process.cwd(), compress: true});

// Set as a route handler using your preferred routing scheme
routes.set('/static/*', serveStatic);

// Or use as the sole route handler if your server only serves static files
const server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {
  serveStatic(req, res);
});

Methodology

Employs standard strategies to manage static resources:

• Sets Cache-Control headers (default value of max-age=86400) to prevent superfluous requests from the browser.
• Sets an e-tag using an md5 hash of the file's inode number and mTime (modified time) and uses this e-tag to return a 304 response if appropriate.
• Checks for a compressed (gzipped) version of the file if options.compress is set to true and the accept-encoding header is sent with the file request.

All files are served by piping a readable stream to Node's writable response stream.

As the name suggests, this module is meant to take care of the essentials and not much more. It assumes you are serving files from a relatively simple structure with a reasonable URL and you are good with strong e-tags.

Test

npm test to run the unit tests. To run tests in dev mode (so you can see console.logs) run npm run dev-test.

You can also start a test server to make sure all the files are being decoded / served properly in a browser:

cd test

node test-server.js

Navigate to localhost:3000 in your browser.

API

basicStatic([options])

Params

options

{Object} with three properties -- rootDir, cache, and compress.

options.rootDir {String} -- Root directory. Defaults to process.cwd().

options.cache {String} -- Cache-Control headers. Defaults to max-age=86400 (24 hours).

options.compress {Boolean} -- Check for a gzipped version of the file. Does not actually do the compression, just looks for a .gz version of the file as appropriate. Defaults to false.

Returns

A {Function} that handles requests and sends the appropriate responses.

License

MIT