Express is serving files without going through route handlers?

user_1029146 0
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I have the following code:

const app = express();
app.use(express.static(path.resolve('../frontend/dist')));

const server = http.createServer(app);

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  console.log('received request');
  res.sendFile(path.resolve('../frontend/dist/index.html'));
});

If I comment out the app.get handler, index.html is served at localhost:3000 anyway, apparently due to the second line. The get handler is not actually executing - received request is never printed in the console.

But without the second line, it can't serve static assets and JS & CSS fail to load. What am I doing wrong here? Why is the static asset config causing the route to be ignored?

express
1 Answers

express.static() is a generic route handler. It tries to match incoming requests to specific files at a target location in your file system. One of the special features it has is that if it gets a request for / it will look for index.html in the target directory.

You can see the feature described in the doc and, in fact, there's an option { index: false} that can turn the feature off if you don't want it to serve index.html automatically.

user_8166200
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