Getting node.js to read files in html format

Question

I am developing a small app in Node.js. I am just using Node.js for input and output. The actual website is just running through nginx. The website has a Websocket connection with node.js and is primarily used for db manipulations.

One of the things I am trying to do is get node to send small pieces of html along with the data from the database. I tried the following code.

simplified:

    connection.on('message', function(message) {
        fs.readFile(__dirname + '/views/user.html', function(err, html){

            if(err){
                console.log(err);
            }else{
                connection.sendUTF( JSON.stringify({
                    content: html,
                    data: {}
                }));
            }
        });
    }
});

When I console.log(html) on the server or in the client I only get numbers back.

Anyone know what could be wrong.

NOTE: I really want to stay away from stuff like socket.io, express, etc. Just keeping it as simple as possible and no fallbacks are needed.

Answer 1

If you don't specify an encoding for fs.readFile, you will retrieve the raw buffer instead of the expected file contents.

Try calling it this way:

fs.readFile(__dirname + '/views/user.html', 'utf8', function(err, html){
....