static files with express.js

Question

If you have this setup

/app
   /public/index.html
   /media

Then this should get what you wanted

var express = require('express');
//var server = express.createServer();
// express.createServer()  is deprecated. 
var server = express(); // better instead
server.configure(function(){
  server.use('/media', express.static(__dirname + '/media'));
  server.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
});

server.listen(3000);

The trick is leaving this line as last fallback

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

As for documentation, since Express uses connect middleware, I found it easier to just look at the connect source code directly.

For example this line shows that index.html is supported https://github.com/senchalabs/connect/blob/2.3.3/lib/middleware/static.js#L140

In the newest version of express the "createServer" is deprecated. This example works for me:

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

//app.use(express.static(__dirname)); // Current directory is root
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public'))); //  "public" off of current is root

app.listen(80);
console.log('Listening on port 80');

express.static() expects the first parameter to be a path of a directory, not a filename. I would suggest creating another subdirectory to contain your index.html and use that.

Serving static files in Express documentation, or more detailed serve-static documentation, including the default behavior of serving index.html:

By default this module will send “index.html” files in response to a request on a directory. To disable this set false or to supply a new index pass a string or an array in preferred order.

res.sendFile & express.static both will work for this

var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var path = require('path');
var public = path.join(__dirname, 'public');

// viewed at http://localhost:8080
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
    res.sendFile(path.join(public, 'index.html'));
});

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

app.listen(8080);

Where public is the folder in which the client side code is

As suggested by @ATOzTOA and clarified by @Vozzie, path.join takes the paths to join as arguments, the + passes a single argument to path.