How to acess path permission in Express nodejs?

Question

I am completely new in express node.js . I have a folder structure like :

/Express 
   --server.js
   --index.html
   --home.html
      /css/
      /js/
      /images
      /fonts

In index.html i am accessing some javascript (js folder) , images (images folder) , fonts (fonts folder) . Also i am linking home.html from index.html page . I need to block accessing home.html directly also .

I wrote a server.js with express-ws like this :

  var express = require('express');
  var app = express();
  var expressWs = require('express-ws')(app);
  var path = require('path');

  //accessing index.html
  app.get('/', function(req, res){
    res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname+'/index.html'));

   });

   //How can i acess all the files inside the JS , CSS , Image and Font folder here ???  

    //Also How can i link home.html from Index.html File and block home.html accessing publicly  

   app.ws('/', function(ws, req) {
      ws.on('message', function(msg) {
       console.log(msg);
      });
      console.log('socket', req.testing);
    });

  app.listen(8888); 

Any suggestions how can i access all the files inside the JS , CSS , Image and Font folder from index.html with server.js ? Also linking home.html from index.html with direct access block .

Answer 1

You should create a separate folder for static content like public or anything else and then use express.static() to serve static content. So here would be your updated directory structure

/Express 
   --server.js
   --index.html
   --home.html
   --/public/ (directory)
          --/css/ (directory)
          --/js/ (directory)
          --/images/ (directory)
          --/fonts/ (directory)

and your updated code would be

  var express = require('express');
  var app = express();
  var expressWs = require('express-ws')(app);
  var path = require('path');

  //for js, css, images and fonts
  app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));

  //accessing index.html
  app.get('/', function(req, res){
    res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, 'index.html'));

   });

   app.ws('/', function(ws, req) {
      ws.on('message', function(msg) {
       console.log(msg);
      });
      console.log('socket', req.testing);
    });

  app.listen(8888); 

Answer 2

add following after requiring path

// serve index.css at localhost:3000/index.css
app.use(express.static('css')); // looks in current directory for css folder

// serve index.js at localhost:3000/static/index.js
app.use('/static', express.static('js')); // looks in current directory for js folder and appends /static to URL

app.use(express.static('fonts'));

Reference on serving static files from express