send

What is send?

The 'send' npm package is a library for streaming files from the file system as an HTTP response. It handles range requests, redirects, and errors, and is built with security in mind. It is often used to serve static files in web applications.

What are send's main functionalities?

Serving static files

This code creates an HTTP server that serves a static file using the send package. When a request is made to the server, it streams the specified file as the response.

const send = require('send');
const http = require('http');

http.createServer(function(req, res){
  send(req, '/path/to/public/index.html').pipe(res);
}).listen(3000);

Handling range requests

This code demonstrates how to handle HTTP range requests for partial content delivery, such as serving video files that can be streamed.

const send = require('send');
const http = require('http');

http.createServer(function(req, res){
  send(req, '/path/to/public/video.mp4')
    .on('headers', function (res, path, stat) {
      res.setHeader('Accept-Ranges', 'bytes');
    })
    .pipe(res);
}).listen(3000);

Custom error handling

This code shows how to handle errors when a file is not found or another error occurs while trying to stream a file.

const send = require('send');
const http = require('http');

http.createServer(function(req, res){
  send(req, '/path/to/public/non-existent-file.html')
    .on('error', function(err) {
      res.statusCode = err.status || 500;
      res.end(err.message);
    })
    .pipe(res);
}).listen(3000);

Other packages similar to send

express

Express is a web application framework for Node.js that includes functionality for serving static files. It is more feature-rich than 'send' and is designed for building web applications and APIs.

koa-send

koa-send is similar to 'send' but is tailored for Koa, a web framework for Node.js created by the same team that built Express. It is used to serve static files in Koa applications.

serve-static

serve-static is a middleware for serving static files for Express and Connect. It is built on top of 'send' and provides a higher-level API for integrating with these frameworks.

README

send

Send is Connect's static() extracted for generalized use, a streaming static file server supporting partial responses (Ranges), conditional-GET negotiation, high test coverage, and granular events which may be leveraged to take appropriate actions in your application or framework.

Installation

$ npm install send

Examples

Small:

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

var app = http.createServer(function(req, res){
  send(req, req.url).pipe(res);
}).listen(3000);

Serving from a root directory with custom error-handling:

var http = require('http');
var send = require('send');
var url = require('url');

var app = http.createServer(function(req, res){
  // your custom error-handling logic:
  function error(err) {
    res.statusCode = err.status || 500;
    res.end(err.message);
  }

  // your custom directory handling logic:
  function redirect() {
    res.statusCode = 301;
    res.setHeader('Location', req.url + '/');
    res.end('Redirecting to ' + req.url + '/');
  }

  // transfer arbitrary files from within
  // /www/example.com/public/*
  send(req, url.parse(req.url).pathname)
  .root('/www/example.com/public')
  .on('error', error)
  .on('directory', redirect)
  .pipe(res);
}).listen(3000);

API

Events

• error an error occurred (err)
• directory a directory was requested
• file a file was requested (path, stat)
• stream file streaming has started (stream)
• end streaming has completed

.root(dir)

Serve files relative to path. Aliased as .from(dir).

.index(path)

By default send supports "index.html" files, to disable this invoke .index(false) or to supply a new index pass a string.

.maxage(ms)

Provide a max-age in milliseconds for http caching, defaults to 0.

.hidden(bool)

Enable or disable transfer of hidden files, defaults to false.

Error-handling

By default when no error listeners are present an automatic response will be made, otherwise you have full control over the response, aka you may show a 5xx page etc.

Caching

It does not perform internal caching, you should use a reverse proxy cache such as Varnish for this, or those fancy things called CDNs. If your application is small enough that it would benefit from single-node memory caching, it's small enough that it does not need caching at all ;).

Debugging

To enable debug() instrumentation output export DEBUG:

$ DEBUG=send node app

Running tests

$ npm install
$ make test

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2012 TJ Holowaychuk <[e-mail]>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.