A Sample Node.js Website

This is a sample basic Node.js website using plain HTML files and the built in http and fs modules.

This tutorial will walk you through the creation of a very basic website using only Node.js built in modules. Follow these steps to create a Node.js website:

Steps

1. Create a folder for your Node.js project.

2. Create a home page HTML and call it index.html. Add the required HTML tags and some basic content in the index.html file.

3. Create a second file and for now, call it another-page.html. Add the required HTML tags and some basic content in the another-page.html file.

4. Add a link in the index.html page to another-page.html. And add a link in the another-page.html to index.html. This will allow for easy testing of pages.

5. Create a new file called app.js.

6. In app.js import the required modules:

   var http = require('http');
   var url = require('url');
   var fs = require('fs');

7. Create an http server:

   http.createServer(function (req, res) {
   }).listen(8080);

   This will start a web server. The server is available to test by opening a browser and using the URL http://localhost:8080/index.html.

8. Inside the createServer function add code to fetch the current URL:

   var q = url.parse(req.url, true);
   var filename = "." + q.pathname;

9. Inside the createServer function, after the the previous lines of code, add code to load the appropriate HTML file based on the URL. For example the URL http://localhost:8080/index.html will load the index.html file.

   fs.readFile(filename, function(err, data) {
     res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
     res.write(data);
     return res.end();
   });

10. Inside the readFile function, add code that will display an error message in case the requested URL does not match an exsting file:

    if (err) {
      res.writeHead(404, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
      return res.end("404 Not Found");
    } 

11. To test your Node.js website, open up a terminal, use cd to navigate to your project folder, and use node app.js to start your file. Then open a browser and visit the URL http://localhost:8080/index.html.

Final Code

Your final code in app.js should look like this:

var http = require('http');
var url = require('url');
var fs = require('fs');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {

  var q = url.parse(req.url, true);

  var filename = "." + q.pathname;

  fs.readFile(filename, function(err, data) {

    if (err) {

      res.writeHead(404, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
      return res.end("404 Not Found");

    } 

    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
    res.write(data);
    return res.end();

  });

}).listen(8080);

Full tutorial URL:
https://codeadam.ca/learning/nodejs-website.html

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Repo Resources

• Visual Studio Code
• Node.js