如何配置expressjs以在生产模式下提供index.html？

Question

I am trying to deploy my app to my local computer to simulate the deployment process. You call it staging mode or whatever. Tools I used include pm2 and Nginx.

I am able to use my web app when I run my app using pm2 start server.js directly in my project. The client can access the index.html file though a Nginx server. But I think this is not production mode unless I also use --env production .

So I copy all the required files to the dist directory of my project, configured Nginx to serve the static contents, and in my source code, I want to use

app.get('/', function(req, res) {
    res.sendFile('index.html', {root: somePath});
});

to allow the clients to access the index.html file on express server. But I am not sure what to put in somePath ? I separate the server side and client side when I deploy my project to the server. For example, my server side is on /usr/path/server but my client side is on /etc/shared/html . If I mess up with the paths I will get a "forbidden" error message from express when I access index.html .

Answer 1

If you want make production-like repeatability during development, then you should implement same functionality with same tools.

Nowadays docker compose is best solution for resolve this issue. As start you should have two container the first with nginx and the second with pm2. Also you should bind/mount volume for static files to nginx.

Answer 2

Your code should be like this.

 var path = require('path');
 var virtualDirPath = process.env.virtualDirPath || '';
 var appDir = path.dirname(require.main.filename) + virtualDirPath;

appDir will give the environment directory , from where you can access the html file.

Hope it helps:)