Declaring the ROOT folder when running HTML site locally - html

I have a simple static site, with HTML pages in different directories and often run the site locally by opening a file in a browser.
The problem I'm having, is the browser doesn't recognize which folder is the ROOT, so any relative url that points back to the root folder (href="/about.html") won't function.
For example.
I open this in the browser: file:///X:/DOCS/MySite/Directory1/page.html
In this "page.html" I have this link: href="/about.html"
I want the link to point to: file:///X:/DOCS/MySite/about.html
But instead, it points to: file:///about.html
My question is: how do I tell the browser which folder is the ROOT?...or...is there another way to better run my site locally?
Note: Until now, I have been using lots of up-directory ("../") in my linking structure as a work around, but this is complicated and causing other issues, so being able to link based on the root ("/") would be far easier.

You can work around it with jQuery/JavaScript.
$("[href^='root:']").each(function() {
var newRoot = "http://google.com/";
$(this).attr("href", newRoot+$(this).attr("href").substr(5))
return false;
});
This changes all links begining with root: so that with the code above, href="root:index.html" would turn into href="http://google.com/index.html"
However, this would not be applied with any links you are adding to the page later on using JavaScript.
http://jsfiddle.net/ptarun/5rztY/1/

Related

Background image url() works on live server but when I open the index.html in the browser it doesn't?

The element is selected properly because other properties apply. There are no console errors.
I have tried:
img/hero.jpg - works when I click on link in VS Code
/img/hero.jpg - works when I click
../../hero.jpg - work when I click
../img/hero.jpg - doesn't work
the full path - works when I click
The problem is seen here. You can see that images called by the src attribute work.
Here is the file structure.
I honestly don't understand your setup / question, but I think if you understand how relative URLs work a little better you can figure it out yourself.
On your server you have your files in somewhere like,
/var/www/html/index.html
/var/www/html/css/styles.css
/var/www/html/img/background.png
On your computer you have your files somewhere like,
C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\index.html
C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\css\styles.css
C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\img\background.png
And in your styles.css you have something like this,
body {
background-image: url('/img/background.png');
}
Starting the URL with / tells the browser to interpret it as the root directory. On a Windows PC it will be C:\ and on a Linux PC it'll be /.
However, when you access the page once it is online from a url like https://example.com, the root directory becomes https://example.com/.
Therefore, using /img/background.png will make it look for the image at https://example.com/img/background.png once it is online, but on your local machine it'll be looking for the image at C:\img\background.png
Starting the url without the slash like this, img/background.png looks for the image relative to the folder that the css file is in. So in that case online it'll look for the background here at https://example.com/css/img/background.png and on your local machine it'll look in C:\Users\Nani\Desktop\Website\css\img\background.png
In my example, the best solution would be to use ../img/background.png, that'll look up one directory relative to the css folder, and then in the img folder. That'll work consistently on both your own computer and once it is uploaded.
That should be enough to figure out what you need to do assuming that the problem is the way the url path is declared. Otherwise, the problem might be with something else. For example, it seems like you're using SCSS. Perhaps the SCSS isn't compiled on your local machine (or hasn't been in a while), but it is compiled on the live server?
It works on live server because its settings make location of index.html a root of your document (/). When you open index.html directly your root is different and images aren't loaded from correct location if you start the path with /.
Best Practice
It is best practice to use relative file paths (if possible).
When using relative file paths, your web pages will not be bound to your current base URL. All links will work on your own computer (localhost) as well as on your current public domain and your future public domains.
I had the same problem and it turns out that I wrote the path wrongly. You have to write the url based on where the css file is, not where the index file is. Because the one that reads the url is the css file. So it should look like this:
body {background-image: url('../img/background.png');}
Because your CSS and your IMG are in different folders.

../ For Parent Directory Not Working HTML

All,
I did a bit of research but haven't found an exact thread or resolution to this issue.
I am using express in this webapp, Chrome Version 60.0.3112.113, and Win 10 Version 1703.
I am currently developing a site where I want to use a hamburger svg for mobile navigation. This is how the html sits for the "topbar"
<div id="topbar">
<img src="../images/hamburger.svg" alt="ham">
</div>
And here is the file structure:
https://puu.sh/xxDih/c842297b54.png
According to the structure, I should only need to do ../images/hamburger.svg, but when I do that, it comes up with a 404 error in the waterfall. I have run into this issue multiple times doing any sort of HTML sourcing into parent directories, but in JS files it works fine.
I'm not exactly sure what the issue is.
For the express server,every uri are processed by the express contains resource url and request url.
Request url(api) is refered to your express api config
resource(image, js, css, html...) is relative to your static server's root directory which was defined by using express.static(root_path).
That's what I want to say.
I noticed that images folder, node_modules folder, and pages folder are all in the same directory, and css is under the pages folder.
"../images/hamburger.svg" is the correct relative path from the pages folder, but being (big red flag) the node_modules is at "../node_modules/" I'm thinking that the server is serving from /pages/ folder, the servers root directory. meaning anything above the /pages/ folder will not be shared.
Clearly you do not want to share out ../../../windows/system32/ or the user documents etc. To prevent sharing those the highest directory you can access from the html page through a browser is the server folder being used. I'm thinking /pages/home.html is localhost/home.html and localhost/css/ is your css directory.
Programs running on the server can access files above the served directory, but the browser can not. "/node_modules/" should be outside of the servers root directory.
I realized this is an issue with express itself.
If (in this case) you have your index.html as express.static('./pages'), then it can't see anything above pages and considers pages as the working directory.
Me, coming from React (which stupidly was the first thing I learned even before basic JS), wants to put all the pages in one folder, which I think would make sense.
The workaround I did, which may not be optimal, was by putting index.html as a sibling to pages, css, and images in the src folder. Then in index.html, it has a meta tag as follows: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=./pages/home.html" /> to redirect to the home.html page.
Again, this may not be optimal, but for a kinda OCD guy like myself this makes sense.
Update:
What we ended up doing is to have index.html be a static page, and then load the individual pages in an iframe. This website is mainly for information and has no database (yet), so there won't be much to process. Here's the new file structure that works.
http://puu.sh/xy5Dw/4dbc72ec06.png
src is now our working directory (express.static('./src')) and everything is detailed within there.
Once we do include a database, it will at most be 10 values in the server and will be using very basic requests, nothing crasy.

why can my browser still open an html file not served through a static file server?

Just wondering how/why this works, when I'm making a simple html file and linking in some css, then dragging my html file into the browser, no static web server is needed for me to view the file.
Why is that so..
I'm looking at my browser's network tab, and no request is made for the css file, and my browser still displays it perfectly..
Is there a way to do without a static file server on the web for html, css, js files, like when dragging and dropping a file into a browser?
Just going back and requestionning basics here..
Thanks in advance!
Because the link to your CSS file is relative, and your CSS file is accessible locally. Browsers can be used to access local files, not just files on the Internet.
When working with links, you may see just the name of the file referenced, as such:
Link
This is known as a relative link. file.html is relative to wherever the document is that is linking to it. In this case, the two files would be in the same folder.
There's a second type of link, known as an absolute URL, where the full path is specified.
Consider a typical absolute website link:
Link
With a local file, this would essentially be:
Link
The file protocol can be used to access local files.
Considering both the homepage (presumably index.html) and file.html would live in the same folder on both a web server and your local machine, Link would work for either scenario. In fact, with a relative link, the location of the second file is automatically determined based on the location of the first file. In my example, index.html would live at file://[YOUR WEBSITE]/index.html, so your browser is smart enough to known to look in file://[YOUR WEBSITE]/ when searching for any relative URLs.
Note that the same scenario applies to any other file! <link> and <script> tags will look for files in the exact same way -- that includes your stylesheet :)
Hope this helps!
Sounds like you are new to HTML and web development.
It all has to do with relative versus absolute file paths.
Check out these articles and have fun coding! Always remember that Google is your friend, improve your search-foo and you will not have to ask questions like this.
God speed.
http://www.geeksengine.com/article/absolute-relative-path.html
http://www.coffeecup.com/help/articles/absolute-vs-relative-pathslinks/
How to properly reference local resources in HTML?

failed to load resource hexo.js

I'm using HexoJS to create a blog. I was able to generate the static files using hexo generate. Even though there are css files and JS files generated, they are not properly linked to the index.html.
So, I have to open each html page and correct each page links given in href and src attributes one by one. I believe that this is not very practical. Can anyone help ?
The localhost is used for preview the website. When we publish our blog, it should be on a server, then the path will be interpreted correctly, we don't need to change any thing. What we saw on http://localhost:4000 will be same when you published your website.
So, we don't have to worry about the broken paths in the public folder.

How to get rid of .html extension when serving webpages with node.js?

I am a beginner with node.js and am using express with the ejs layout, and I want to know how to get rid of the .html extension when putting up a page. For example if I go to my localhost:3000/about.html - that works but I want it to show up as just /about. Also, having trouble figuring out how to change the favicon if anyone knows how to quickly change that from the express default.
Any help would be great thanks.
(I realise this question is old, but it appears high in Google search results, and the accepted answer isn't the best solution.)
The best solution for serving up static content in express.js is express.static. To avoid having to specify file extensions in URLs you can configure it with a list of default file extensions that it will use when searching for static files:
app.use(express.static(pathToBaseFolderOfStaticContent, {
extensions: ['html', 'htm'],
... // Other options here
}));
This will serve up pathToBaseFolderOfStaticContent/somePage.html or pathToBaseFolderOfStaticContent/somePage.htm in response to a GET request to http://www.example.com/somePage, which is what you want. For example, if you visit https://arcade.ly/star-castle, the file it serves up is just a static file called star-castle.html. I haven't had to add any special routing for this, or any other static file - it's all just handled by express.static.
I only need to add specific routes for content that requires active work on the server to return. A big advantage here is that I can use a CDN to cache more of my content (or nginx if I were running an internal line of business app), thus reducing load on my server.
You can obviously configure as many default file extensions as you like, although I'd tend to keep the list short. I only use it for resources where the URL is likely to appear in the address bar, which generally means HTML files, although not always.
Have a look at the following documentation on serving static content with express.js:
http://expressjs.com/en/starter/static-files.html
http://expressjs.com/en/4x/api.html (the express.static documentation is at the top)
This is also answered at In express what is the common way to associate a default file extension with static content requests?.
The favicon.ico issue can be solved by dropping your favicon into the root folder from which you serve static content, as well as implementing +Costa's solution where you reference it using a <link> in the <head> of your documents.
In theory you shouldn't need to do put the favicon in the root folder but, in practice, some browsers will still ask for it from the site root even though it's referenced in the <head> of your document. This leads to a spurious 404 error that you'll be able to see in client side debugging tools (e.g., Chrome dev tools).
The Favicon issue is usually a caching problem. As long as you have this code in your base html layout:
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/images/favicon.ico">
Then just navigate to wherever that image is with your browser, and that should force your cache to update.
I figured it out. I looked at this post Render basic HTML view? which solved the problem I was having.
app.engine('html', require('ejs').renderFile);
app.get('/', function(req, res){
res.render("index.html");
});
And this all goes in the app.js or whatever file you are running.