node v5 express 4.13.3
What I did:
I was serving out the index.hmtl file when the index route("/") was hit. I then set it the public folder to be sent out as a static file.
What Problem it Caused:
Now that it is static, my index route is no longer entered when the browser opens the index route e.g.(localhost:3000/)
Question:
Is that expected behavior? Is it a good idea to serve index.html statically ?
Is that expected behavior?
Yes. Express will pass a request through the list of middleware (including your own index route), and if one of those can handle the request, it will and the request will finish (it won't get passed to other middleware).
The static middleware can handle the request for the index (presumably because you have an index.html in your public directory), so the request will end there and not get passed to your handler as well.
The order in which requests are passed to middleware is something that you can control. If you want your own index handler to get a higher priority, you should declare it before the static middleware:
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
...
});
app.use(express.static(...));
Is it a good idea to serve index.html statically ?
If it's plain HTML and there's nothing else that needs to be done when it's requested, it's probably best to let the static middleware handle it.
