If none of that worked out, then we set a “404 / Not Found” header, and send some markup back, letting the user know. If there was an error, for now we are piping it to the console for our own troubleshooting. If there is none, then we use the res.end() method to return the contents of index.html and then close the request. So just to play it safe, we check to see if there is an error: if ( !err ). That anonymous function takes two arguments: an error object, and the content of the file that is to be returned. The fs.fileRead() method takes two arguments: a path to the physical file that we want to return to the user, and an anonymous function. We then leverage the “_dirname” keyword, which provides a quick and easy handle to the folder that your server-side JavaScript file resides in.Īfter that, we check to see if the user has requested “index.html”, and if so we will return it. We use the basename() method of the path module to return the name of the file that was requested by the user (i.e. Next, our helper function has grown a bit as well.

We have not even begun to scratch the surface of what is possible. So here is where the fun stuff starts: Writing JavaScript that has access to the local file system? Yep. This module provides access to the file system. The “fs” module is short for “File System”. The “path” module provides a number of methods that help you to examine and parse file paths. The biggest change is that we’ve expanded “Step # 1” and are requiring two new Node.js modules: “path” and “fs”. There are a few new things happening in Example # 1, when compared to the examples from Part I of this series. step 3) listen for an HTTP request on port 3000 Res.end('Sorry, the page you are looking for cannot be found.') NOTE: _dirname returns the root folder that LocalFolder = _dirname + '/public/' //where our public files are located a helper function to handle HTTP requestsįileName = path.basename(req.url),//the file that was requested Path = require('path'),//helps with file pathsįs = require('fs') //helps with file system tasks Http = require('http'),//helps with http methods

Quick node http server