Handle 404 error with Express 4

Question

I am using Express 4 and I have about 50 html pages. I'm trying to handle 404 errors but can't figure out how. I don't want to manually define all the routers within node. Is there a way to dynamically redirect to a 404 Jade template if a page doesn't exist?

I tried this code but didn't work:

app.enable('verbose errors');
app.set('port', 3000);

app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/html/'));

var server = http.createServer(app);
server.listen(app.get('port'), function() {
    console.log('ONLINE !');
});

app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    console.log('GET ' + req.originalUrl)
    console.log('At %d', Date.now());
    next();
});

// Handle 404
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    if(req.accepts('html') && res.status(404)) {
        res.render('404.jade');
        return;
    }
});

Answer 1

This is working for me:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();

app.use(express.static('public'));

app.get('/', function (req, res) {
    res.send('Hello World!');
});

app.get('/employee', function (req, res) {
    res.send('Employee route !!');
});


// Handle 404 - Keep this as a last route
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.status(404);
    res.send('404: File Not Found');
});

app.listen(3000, function () {
    console.log('Example app listening on port 3000!');
});

Folder structure,

Now when we issue the request like this

http://localhost:3000/sample

This has been handled by the middleware.

UPDATE

The way to show the html files without writing the get request is just another middleware like this

app.use(express.static('public'));
app.use(express.static('views'));

Add the 'views' middleware exactly after the 'public'.

Now if we give

http://localhost:3000/index.html

The page is rendered.