Express.js serve files from directory about project root

Question

I would like to break my node.js/express.js UI (html/resources) out of my existing project directory. IOW, I want to move all of my static html/js/css..etc into an external directory, above my project directory.
Example:

rootpath  
   /UI_1  
     Views ( html files)  
       index.html  
     public
        javascripts  
          status.js  


  /NodeJSProject (has express...etc 

I am able to serve the html files just fine. However, I am having trouble getting the static resources (js/css..etc) served correctly, or referenced correctly by the html files...

in my node project, in app.js I tired this...

app.use('cust1', express.static(path.join(__dirname, "../UI_1/public")));

and then in the html...

 <script src="cust1/javascripts/status.js"></script>

Is this even possible??, thanks .

Answer 1

If /NodeJSProject is at the same directory level as /UI_1 , then it should work if you add a / to the path in the script tag and remove /cust1 which isn't anywhere in your static directory hierarchy:

<script src="/javascripts/status.js"></script>

And, change the middleware to this:

app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, "../UI_1/public")));

That will make the path that the browser requests absolute rather than relative to where the host HTML page is. When you leave off the leading / , then the browser uses the path of the containing HTML file which may or may not be what you want. When you use a / on it, then nothing is relative to the path of the containing HTML file and it's a lot easier to be consistent about what will be requested so you can match it up with express.static() .

I have no idea why "cust1" was in your app.use() statement because you show no cust1 anywhere in the static resources so I recommended you remove it. If you think that needs to be there, then please explain what it is for and why?

---

You could also have cust1 in both paths/URLs with the leading / :

<script src="/cust1/javascripts/status.js"></script>

and

app.use(express.static("/cust1", path.join(__dirname, "../UI_1/public")));

But, it does not seem to be required. If there's a cust2 , then you'd have to customize everything for each customer and have separate middleware for each customer.