Nancy Self Host and Static Content Files

Question

Am I right in thinking that if you create a self host nancy console app and want to serve up html,javascript and css files that you have to go thru all these files (could be quite a few) and mark them all for copy to output directory.

public class HomeModule : NancyModule
{
    public HomeModule()
    {

        Get["/"] = v =>  View["index.html"];
    }
}

This will not be found if the index.html file is in the project folder and is not marked copy to output on it's properties.

Answer 1

Edit: I stand corrected, I misunderstood the question.

Yes you need to set all static content to copy, however when I setup my project's (I can't copy paste an example for you at the moment), I just add a Build Event in the project file, or I setup a Build Task for the CI / deployment.

---

Nope, you don't need to mark every file individually.

https://github.com/NancyFx/Nancy/wiki/Managing-static-content

You can mark an entire directory.

Alternatively, if you're using OWIN, you can use the Static Content middleware.

Something like:

public class Startup
{
    public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
    {
        var fileSystem = new FileServerOptions
        {
            EnableDirectoryBrowsing = false,
            FileSystem = new PhysicalFileSystem("....")
        };

        app.UseFileServer(fileSystem);
        app.UseNancy();
    }
}

Answer 2

I had the same issue and I found a workaround that others might find useful:

Instead of copying the files to the output directory on each build, I created a directory junction in it, targeting the original static-files directories.

This allows real-time editing of the static content in Visual-Studio (without the need to rebuild in order to copy the edited files to the output directory)

eg (Post-build command line):

if not exist "$(TargetDir)Web" md "$(TargetDir)Web"
if not exist "$(TargetDir)Web\Content" mklink /j "$(TargetDir)Web\Content" "$(ProjectDir)Content" 
if not exist "$(TargetDir)Web\Scripts" mklink /j "$(TargetDir)Web\Scripts" "$(ProjectDir)Scripts" 
if not exist "$(TargetDir)Web\Fonts" mklink /j "$(TargetDir)Web\Fonts" "$(ProjectDir)Fonts" 
if not exist "$(TargetDir)Web\Static" mklink /j "$(TargetDir)Web\Static" "$(ProjectDir)Web\Static" 

Answer 3

You can use Visual studio build events and add xcopy command like this:

xcopy /E /Y "$(ProjectDir)\Views" "$(ProjectDir)\bin\$(ConfigurationName)\Views\*"
xcopy /E /Y "$(ProjectDir)\Content" "$(ProjectDir)\bin\$(ConfigurationName)\Content\*"

when project is built xcopy gets executed and files are copied in output dir, so your selfhost exe can see that files.