How can I include css files using node, express, and ejs?

1.Create a new folder named 'public' if none exists.

2.Create a new folder named 'css' under the newly created 'public' folder

3.create your css file under the public/css path

4.On your html link css i.e <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/style.css">

// note the href uses a slash(/) before and you do not need to include the 'public'

5.On your app.js include : app.use(express.static('public'));

Boom.It works!!

The custom style sheets that we have are static pages in our local file system. In order for server to serve static files, we have to use,

app.use(express.static("public"));

where,

public is a folder we have to create inside our root directory and it must have other folders like css, images.. etc

The directory structure would look like :

Then in your html file, refer to the style.css as

<link type="text/css" href="css/styles.css" rel="stylesheet">

For NodeJS I would get the file name from the res.url, write the header for the file by getting the extension of the file with path.extname, create a read stream for the file, and pipe the response.

const http = require('http');
const fs = require('fs');
const path = require('path');
const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
    let filePath = path.join(
        __dirname,
        "public",
        req.url === "/" ? "index.html" : req.url
    );

    let extName = path.extname(filePath);
    let contentType = 'text/html';

    switch (extName) {
        case '.css':
            contentType = 'text/css';
            break;
        case '.js':
            contentType = 'text/javascript';
            break;
        case '.json':
            contentType = 'application/json';
            break;
        case '.png':
            contentType = 'image/png';
            break;
        case '.jpg':
            contentType = 'image/jpg';
            break;
    }

    console.log(`File path: ${filePath}`);
    console.log(`Content-Type: ${contentType}`)

    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': contentType});

    const readStream = fs.createReadStream(filePath);
    readStream.pipe(res);
});

server.listen(port, (err) => {
    if (err) {
        console.log(`Error: ${err}`)
    } else {
        console.log(`Server listening at port ${port}...`);
    }
});

Use in your main .js file:

app.use('/css',express.static(__dirname +'/css'));

use in you main .html file:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/style.css" />

The reason you getting an error because you are using a comma instead of a concat + after __dirname.

In your app or server.js file include this line:

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

In your index.ejs, following line will help you:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/style.css" />

I hope this helps, it did for me!

IMHO answering this question with the use of ExpressJS is to give a superficial answer. I am going to answer the best I can with out the use of any frameworks or modules. The reason this question is often answerd with the use of a framework is becuase it takes away the requirment of understanding 'Hypertext-Transfer-Protocall'.

1. The first thing that should be pointed out is that this is more a problem surrounding "Hypertext-Transfer-Protocol" than it is Javascript. When request are made the url is sent, aswell as the content-type that is expected.
2. The second thing to understand is where request come from. Iitialy a person will request a HTML document, but depending on what is written inside the document, the document itsself might make requests of the server, such as: Images, stylesheets and more. This question refers to CSS so we will keep our focus there. In a tag that links a CSS file to an HTML file there are 3 properties. rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" and href="http://localhost/..." for this example we are going to focus on type and href. Type sends a request to the server that lets the server know it is requesting 'text/css', and 'href' is telling it where the request is being made too.

so with that pointed out we now know what information is being sent to the server now we can now seperate css request from html request on our serverside using a bit of javascript.

var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');




    function onRequest(request, response){  
        if(request.headers.accept.split(',')[0] == 'text/css') {
             console.log('TRUE');
          
             fs.readFile('index.css', (err, data)=>{
                 response.writeHeader(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/css'});
                 response.write(data);
                 response.end();
             });  
        }

        else {
            console.log('FALSE');    
            
            fs.readFile('index.html', function(err, data){
                response.writeHead(200, {'Content_type': 'text/html'});
                response.write(data);
                response.end();
            });
        };
    };

    http.createServer(onRequest).listen(8888);
    console.log('[SERVER] - Started!');

Here is a quick sample of one way I might seperate request. Now remember this is a quick example that would typically be split accross severfiles, some of which would have functions as dependancys to others, but for the sack of 'all in a nutshell' this is the best I could do. I tested it and it worked. Remember that index.css and index.html can be swapped with any html/css files you want.

I have used the following steps to resolve this problem

1. create new folder (static) and move all js and css file into this folder.
2. then add app.use('/static', express.static('static'))
3. add css like <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/static/style.css"/>
4. restart server to view impact after changes.

Use this in your server.js file

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

without the directory ( __dirname ) and then within your project folder create a new file and name it public then put all your static files inside it

Its simple if you are using express.static(__dirname + 'public') then don't forget to put a forward slash before public that is express.static(__dirname + '/public') or use express.static('public') its also going to work; and don't change anything in CSS linking.

the order of registering routes is important . register 404 routes after static files.

correct order:

app.use("/admin", admin);
...

app.use(express.static(join(__dirname, "public")));

app.use((req, res) => {
  res.status(404);
  res.send("404");
});

otherwise everything which is not in routes , like css files etc.. , will become 404 .

There is a problem if you use route selectors like "/something" because it will break the css link href if used only "file.css" without the preceding / slash. My approach was:

1- Choose one folder to keep static files as the 'file.css'. Then:

app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/thefolder')); 

2- In the templates, the site root "/" turns it a really static url whatever the route is:

<link href="/file.css" rel="stylesheet">

Now, even if the route is '/something', the css will loaded normally. Without the slash, css wouldn't be found and would get the error message: can't GET /something/file.css.

The above responses half worked and I'm not why they didn't on my machine but I had to do the following for it work.

1. Created a directory at the root

   /public/js/

2. Paste this into your server.js file with name matching the name of directory created above. Note adding /public as the first param

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

3. Finally in the HTML page to which to import the javascript file into,

   <script src="public/js/bundle.js"></script>