Reading HTML in Node.js

Question

I'm trying to launch an index.html page with nodejs, but for some reason I keep getting an Application error after I push it to Heroku. Any idea what I have wrong with my code?

 #/!/usr/bin/env node

 var express = require('express');

 var app = express.createServer(express.logger());

 app.get('/', function(request, response) {
     var fs = require('fs');
     var buffer = new Buffer();
     response.send(buffer.toString('utc-8', fs.readFileSync("index.html")));
 });

 var port = process.env.PORT || 5000;
 app.listen(port, function() {
 console.log("Listening on " + port);
 });

Jonathan Lonowski · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-19 22:43:28Z

2

When using fs.readFileSync() without specifying any options, the return value will already be a Buffer, so you shouldn't have to create another.

Buffer.isBuffer(fs.readFileSync('index.html'));            // true
typeof fs.readFileSync('index.html', 'utf8') === 'string'; // true

And, res.send() can handle being given a Buffer. It'll actually convert the String back to a Buffer, anyways.

var fs = require('fs');
response.send(fs.readFileSync('index.html'));

You may also want to set a Content-Type so the browser knows it's HTML:

var fs = require('fs');
response.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/html');
response.send(fs.readFileSync('index.html'));

Or, you can also use Express' res.sendfile(), which will manage both parts for you:

app.get('/', function (request, response) {
    response.sendfile('index.html');
});

Though, if the error you're getting mentions ENOENT, you may need to affix the path.

fs paths will be relative to the current working directory, which may not be what you expect.

response.sendfile(__dirname + '/index.html');

edited Sep 19, 2013 at 22:43

answered Sep 19, 2013 at 22:24

Jonathan Lonowski

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1 Comment

TAH Over a year ago

This is great information and was very helpful! I wasn't able to figure out exactly what was wrong - I tried everything you mentioned a bunch of times and it continued to throw the error. Then I tried going back to just doing response.send('Hello World!') and it still threw the error. So I just created a new directory/app and it works!!!

Stefan Paletta · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-19 22:41:32Z

1

buffer.toString('utc-8', ... – typo, should be utf-8. But do consider Jonathan’s answer anyway.

answered Sep 19, 2013 at 22:41

Stefan Paletta

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