What is the best practice for serving html in node.js with express.js?

Question

You could use the static middleware:

app.use("/", express.static(__dirname));

A server example:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.use('/', express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
app.listen(3000, function() { console.log('listening')});

This is the file structure:

.
├── public
│   ├── a.html
│   ├── b.html
│   └── c.html
└── server.js

Documentation:

• http://expressjs.com/api.html#app.use
• http://www.senchalabs.org/connect/static.html
• http://expressjs.com/faq.html#multiple-statics

One idea would be to use a catch-all kind of route as the last route, like the following:

app.get('/:page', function(req, res) {
  res.sendfile(path.join(__dirname, 'public', 'pages', path.basename(req.params.page) + '.html'));
});

That would require that you put your .html files into public/pages/about.html, etc.

You might want to switch the order of the static file router so that static files get precedence over routes, too, unless you want that route catching things in the public folder, like this:

app

app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.use(express.favicon("public/img/favicon.ico"));
app.use(express.logger('dev'));
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.methodOverride());
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
app.use(app.router);