Node express routing sendfile fails depending on file location

Question

I have a directory structure for a restful express service + Backbone client with pushState enabled like this (client code in public/)

app.js
lib/routes.js
-- public/
   -- index.html

I set up /public to be a static directory in app.configure:

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

This already works off the bat if the index is visited first.

Then when I directly visit a route other than homepage I ensure to redirect to the index.html. This works perfectly fine in app.js, but if I try and put this in lib/routes.js I get a Forbidden error:

From app.js works fine:

app.get('*', function(req, res) {
    res.sendfile(__dirname + '/public/index.html');
});

From lib/routes.js:

res.sendfile(__dirname + '../public/index.html');

Gives me:

Error: Forbidden
        at SendStream.error (/Users/*****/Sites/myproject/node_modules/express/node_modules/send/lib/send.js:145:16)
        at SendStream.pipe (/Users/*****/Sites/myproject/node_modules/express/node_modules/send/lib/send.js:307:39)
        at ServerResponse.res.sendfile (/Users/*****/Sites/myproject/node_modules/express/lib/response.js:345:8)
        at /Users/*****/Sites/myproject/lib/routes.js:8:7
        at callbacks (/Users/*****/Sites/myproject/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:164:37)
        at param (/Users/*****/Sites/myproject/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:138:11)
        at pass (/Users/*****/Sites/myproject/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:145:5)
        at Router._dispatch (/Users/*****/Sites/myproject/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:173:5)
        at Object.router (/Users/*****/Sites/myproject/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:33:10)
        at next (/Users/*****/Sites/myproject/node_modules/express/node_modules/connect/lib/proto.js:193:15)

If I simply try:

res.sendfile('/public/index.html');

It can't find the file and I get:

Error: ENOENT, stat '/public/index.html'

To summarise how can I use sendFile and pass in public/index.html from lib/routes.js without getting a Forbidden error?

Answer 1

Thanks @Joe. For completeness since the dupe isn't very clear and trying various relative pathing including trying {root: 'somepath'} as 2nd param didn't work this is what I did:

var path = require('path');
...
app.get('*', function(req, res) {
    res.sendfile(path.resolve('public/index.html'));
});

Even though that is in the lib/ directory it resolved using the base directory, to re-reiterate relative resolving didn't work for me but there may be some way of doing it.