Default behavior of public/index.html

[jcubic]

I've noticed that when I have public/index.html file and code:

app.use('/public', express.static('public'));

app.get('/', function(req: Request, res: Response) {
    res.render('pages/debug', {
        html: 'DEBUG'
    });
});

The code is ignored when there is public/index.html file. Is that true? I thought that the server I was using (shared hosting) had some kind of bug and it was caching old HTML somehow.

[dougwilson]

You can add the index: false option to your static middleware if you don't want it to serve index files in reponse to a directory (https://expressjs.com/en/4x/api.html#express.static):

app.use('/public', express.static('public'), { index: false });

app.get('/', function(req: Request, res: Response) {
    res.render('pages/debug', {
        html: 'DEBUG'
    });
});

Or you can put your app.get above your static call if you want to ensure that your route is a higher priority than your static files:

app.get('/', function(req: Request, res: Response) {
    res.render('pages/debug', {
        html: 'DEBUG'
    });
});

app.use('/public', express.static('public'));

[jcubic]

isn't this code:

app.use('/public', express.static('public'));

create http://example.com/public/index.html and make http://example.com/public/ work?

Why does it hijack http://example.com/?

[dougwilson]

Oh sorry, i didn't even see the prefix of public, lol. I tried your code on my machine just now and I don't see any hijacking at all. Does it work on your local machine?

[dougwilson]

Ultimately what you are describing should not be happening and if it is express, it is a bug. I would recommend opening an issue and provide a complete app and reproduction steps so we can further investigate.

[jcubic]

I need to check. It happens on my shared hosting with CloudLinux and I thought that this is a kind of caching because index.html was served on / in the first version of the app.

[jcubic]

No it doesn't happen locally, so this must be an issue with the server where I run the app.