How to resolve paths in Node

Question

I have a node server running, and I am trying to figure out how to convey the paths to files on my servers (and how to respond to get requests for these resources) so that I basically have a static file server, but one that I can control based on request parameters ( POST or GET etc.). Right now my file structure is set up as follows ( dir_ means directory):

Main Folder:
    server.js
    dir_content:
           home.html
           style.css
           dir_uploads:
               dir_finished:
                    file1.txt
                    file2.txt

To respond to my requests, my code looks like the following:

http.createServer(function(request, response) {

if(request.method.toLowerCase() == 'get') {
    var filePath = './dir_content' + request.url;
    if (filePath == './dir_content/') {
        filePath = './dir_content/home.html';
    }
fs.exists(filePath, function (exists) {
        if (exists) {
            fs.readFile(filePath, function (error, content) {
                if (error) {
                    response.writeHead(500);
                    response.end();
                }
                else {
                    response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': contentType});
                    response.end(content, 'utf-8');
                }
            })

This allows me to respond to any GET requests for web pages with the correct page (if it exists) but it eventually warps the path to a resource on my server.

Example: Someone trying to retrieve file1.txt would navigate to localhost:8080/dir_content/dir_uploads/dir_finished/file1.txt

but my code would add the additional ./dir_content to their request, making it look like they were trying to visit:

localhost:8080/dir_content/dir_content/dir_uploads/dir_finished/file1.txt

Is there a simpler way to provide accurate absolute paths to resources in folders WITHOUT external node modules (by setting a sort of base directory somehow)?

Answer 1

At first glance it appears you aren't accounting for the request.url possibly including the dir_content prefix. If that is indeed true, then I would recommend a simple regular expression test to see if it is there:

if (!/^[\/]?dir_content\//i.test(request.url))
    filePath = '/dir_content' + request.url;

filePath = '.' + filePath;

Simple fiddle to demonstrate the regular expression:

http://jsfiddle.net/97Q43/