Changing static content directory

Question

I am trying to set the express.static path to something different based on a session variable. The relevant code is below.

app.use( '/', function(req, res, next ) {

    if ( req.session.loggedIn ) {
        console.log("loggedIn :  " + req.session.loggedIn);
        app.use('/', express.static(__dirname + '/private'));
        next();
    }
    else {
        console.log("not logged in.");
        app.use('/', express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
        next();
    }

 });

When I start the application, I begin with not having req.session.loggedIn set. So it will use the static content in the /public directory (which contains an angular powered application for public users.) I then do a login (code below)

app.post('/login', function( req, res ) {

    req.session.loggedIn = true;
    var message = {};
    message.success = true;
    message.text = "Logging you in...";
    res.json(message);

});

Which sets the req.session.loggedIn variable to be true. I then hit refresh on the page (and have tried hard refresh, and cache clear/refresh as well). The console.log tells me "loggedIn : true" as expected, however it does NOT load the static content from the /private directory. It instead continues to load from the /public directory.

Can anyone shed light on this issue?

Answer 1

The express.static is just another middleware so you can call it directly with the request and response parameters. Instead of adding it to the '/' route directly you could wrap it in another middleware like this:

var public_pages = express.static(__dirname + '/public');
var private_pages = express.static(__dirname + '/private');

app.use('/', function(req, res, next) {
    if(req.session.loggedIn == 1) {
        private_pages(req, res, next);
    } else {
        public_pages(req, res, next);
    }
});