Serve a Directory with Node.js

By  on  

As I mentioned in Serve a Directory with Python, sometimes you need a directory to be "served" instead of loading the file:// location within your browser.  In the past I would mess around with MAMPStack and swapping out httpdocs directories, but there are better tools these days.

If you prefer to use Node.js instead of Python, you can use the http-server package:

# Install via shell
npm install http-server -g

# Serve a directory
http-server

# Serve a directory at a specified port
http-server -p 2020

Check out the http-server NPM page to check out specific options, but I wanted to highlight how easy it can be to serve a directory with Node.js.  And for JavaScript lovers like me...Node.js is the way to go.

Recent Features

  • By
    5 Ways that CSS and JavaScript Interact That You May Not Know About

    CSS and JavaScript:  the lines seemingly get blurred by each browser release.  They have always done a very different job but in the end they are both front-end technologies so they need do need to work closely.  We have our .js files and our .css, but...

  • By
    JavaScript Promise API

    While synchronous code is easier to follow and debug, async is generally better for performance and flexibility. Why "hold up the show" when you can trigger numerous requests at once and then handle them when each is ready?  Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world...

Incredible Demos

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!