Add option to remove trailing slashes, as opposed to adding them about serve-static HOT 9 CLOSED

The problem with links is mostly benign, I think. I haven't seen a relative link in the wild in years. Either way, if you're setting an option to remove trailing slashes you should understand the consequences.

You'd be surprised :) I am constantly helping new web programmers with little to no understanding of any of this, and would expect it to look the same way as when they double-click on the file on their file system.

I don't think having the option you propose would be valid for this project now that I better understand it, I'm sorry. You're welcome to use a different project or similar if that is really what you want to do without having a file system layout that matches the files served. But in reality, files should never be served up by Node.js unless as a last resort, so you should be using Apache/NGINX/etc. I'm not sure if they have those options you're looking for, either, but if they do, that would probably be the best overall solution.

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Hi @fabiosantoscode . I wonder what the problem is, first. Can you provide a reproduction case that we can debug through to see the issue you are having? Just modify one of the examples in https://github.com/expressjs/serve-static#examples and provide the modified code here and the steps to see what is happening and then what you expect to happen instead. Thanks!

from serve-static.

@dougwilson certainly!

I've just noticed, by trying to reproduce this myself, that this statement was incorrect:

even if it's possible to stop from redirecting to a trailing slash

However, the main issue still holds.

I'm going to paste my code and describe how I built the "public" directory, but let me know if you'd like me to create a gist or a github repository.

var express = require('express')           
var serveStatic = require('serve-static')  
                                           
var app = express()                        
                                           
app.use(serveStatic('public', { redirect: false }))             
app.listen(4444)                           

This is what's in the public folder (the index.html file is just an empty file, since it doesn't matter what it contains)

public/
└── foo
    └── index.html

To reproduce the issue I'm describing, I've used curl:

(venv) fabio@fabio-thinkpad ♥  curl -I localhost:4444/foo
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
[...other headers]

(curl -I localhost:4444/foo/ yields a 200 OK response)

I would like a way to serve /foo here by reading whatever is in its index.html file. And also for /foo/ to be redirected to just /foo. This might be two options, or one option. Either way I'm happy to send a PR.

Thanks for the speedy reply!

from serve-static.

Ah, I see. I don't think that's going to work, though, as all the relative links on the index.html would not work in that case, right?

from serve-static.

Any reason why not to just do public/foo.html to achieve the same thing? Then the file would be logically in the proper relative directly to which it would be served out it. The https://github.com/expressjs/serve-static#extensions option would make that work for the url /foo

from serve-static.

public/foo.html would certainly achieve the same thing. I didn't think of that at all. I'm not sure if that's a good option for the Gatsby project, but I'll check.

The problem with links is mostly benign, I think. I haven't seen a relative link in the wild in years. Either way, if you're setting an option to remove trailing slashes you should understand the consequences.

from serve-static.

Thank you!

from serve-static.

Hi @dougwilson, random question for you... I've recently started working on a Nginx/Nodejs stack and read part of your comment above:

...files should never be served up by Node.js unless as a last resort...

I've suspected this to be true for a while but don't yet fully understand the rationale. Do you mind explaining the reasoning behind this?

from serve-static.

Hi @formulahunter this is a general Node.js question I would suggest asking on Node.js itself to get the full answer. The short answer is that serving files will consume your worker pool (https://nodejs.org/en/docs/guides/dont-block-the-event-loop/).

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