NodeJS - response.send() is not a function

Question

I have a simple nodejs app that I'm trying to send a "page not found" message if the url is invalid.

const http = require("http");
const port = 4098;

let app = http.createServer((request, response) => {
    let url = request.url;

    switch (url) {
      case "/":
         getStaticFile(response, "./public/home.html");
      break;
      case "/contact":
         getStaticFile(response, "./public/contact.html");
      break;
      default:
         response.send("Oops...Page Not Found!");
      break;
     }
});

function getStaticFile(response, pathToFile) {
  fs.readFile(pathToFile, function(error, data) {
   if (error) {
      response.writeHead("500", { "Content-Type": "text/plain" });
      response.end("500 - Internal Server Error");
    }
   if (data) {
      response.writeHead("200", { "Content-Type": "text/html" });
      response.end(data);
    }
   });
}

app.listen(port, () => {
  !console.log(`Listening to connections on port ${port}`);
});

I'm passing the response to the getStaticFile but I'm getting a response.send()is not a function. What could be my issue?

Answer 1

You have probably created an HTTP server based on the http module.

response, which is a http.ServerResponse instance, does not have a .send method. It does, as you found out, have a .end method, though.

My guess is that you have seen some Express code. Express is a framework to build HTTP servers, and it provides additional functionality on top of the regular http module.

One of those additional functions is a .send method for HTTP response instances:

var express = require('express'); 
var app     = express();
var server  = app.listen(3000);

app.get('/', function(request, response) {   
    response.send('hello world!');
});