💡 Today I Learned

Use express webserver to serve local files over http

NOTE: I use npx http-server -o for this, instead now.

You can use "express" to serve local files.

First:

npm install express

Then create a file, server.js, with contents much-like:

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

// __dirname will use the current path from where you run this file
app.use(express.static(__dirname));
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'C:\\SOME\\Path\\Here')));

app.listen(8000);
console.log('Listening on port 8000');

(Replacing 'C:\\SOME\\Path\\Here' with the path that will serve as the root of the 'site', noting double backslashies. In *nix land of course it's all forward slashies.)

Then start the web server using:

node server.js

And browse to:

http://localhost:8000/{fileName}

(Replacing with the path to the file you want to see, relative to the root path)

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