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:

   varhttp=require('http');varurl=require('url');varfs=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:

   varq=url.parse(req.url,true);varfilename="."+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);returnres.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'});returnres.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:

varhttp=require('http');varurl=require('url');varfs=require('fs');http.createServer(function(req,res){varq=url.parse(req.url,true);varfilename="."+q.pathname;fs.readFile(filename,function(err,data){if(err){res.writeHead(404,{'Content-Type': 'text/html'});returnres.end("404 Not Found");}res.writeHead(200,{'Content-Type': 'text/html'});res.write(data);returnres.end();});}).listen(8080);

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

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Repo Resources

• Visual Studio Code
• Node.js