Simple node based HTTP server

In a previous post we used webpack to run an HTTP server, in this post we’re going to create a bare bones HTTP server using the http package.

In your chosen folder run the usual commands

  • yarn init y
  • tsc –init
  • Add a folder named public off of the folder you source will be in (this will be where we add static html files)

Now lets’ add the required packages

  • yarn add node-static @types/node-static

Add the following to the package.json

"scripts": {
  "start": "node server.js",
  "build": "tsc"
}

In the public folder add index.html with the following 

<html>
  <head></head>
  <body>
  Hello World
  </body>
</html>

Now let’s add the code to start up our server (mine’s in the file server.ts)

import ns from "node-static";
import http from "http"

const file = new ns.Server("./public");

http.createServer((request, response) => {
    request.addListener("end", () => {
        file.serve(request, response);
    })
    .resume()
})
.listen(4000);

Simple run yarn build then yarn start and the server will start. Navigating your preferred browser to http://localhost:4000/ will then display the HTML file, i.e. Hello World text.