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send

Send is a library for streaming files from the file system as a http response supporting partial responses (Ranges), conditional-GET negotiation (If-Match, If-Unmodified-Since, If-None-Match, If-Modified-Since), high test coverage, and granular events which may be leveraged to take appropriate actions in your application or framework.

Looking to serve up entire folders mapped to URLs? Try serve-static.

# Installation

This is a Node.js module available through the npm registry. Installation is done using the `npm install` command:

$ npm install send

# API

var send = require('send')

## send(req, path, [options])

Create a new `SendStream` for the given path to send to a `res`. The `req` is the Node.js HTTP request and the `path` is a urlencoded path to send (urlencoded, not the actual file-system path).

### Options

#### acceptRanges

Enable or disable accepting ranged requests, defaults to true. Disabling this will not send `Accept-Ranges` and ignore the contents of the `Range` request header.

#### cacheControl

Enable or disable setting `Cache-Control` response header, defaults to true. Disabling this will ignore the `immutable` and `maxAge` options.

#### dotfiles

Set how "dotfiles" are treated when encountered. A dotfile is a file or directory that begins with a dot ("."). Note this check is done on the path itself without checking if the path actually exists on the disk. If `root` is specified, only the dotfiles above the root are checked (i.e. the root itself can be within a dotfile when when set to "deny").

- ‘'allow’`No special treatment for dotfiles. -`'deny'`Send a 403 for any request for a dotfile. -`'ignore'` Pretend like the dotfile does not exist and 404.

The default value is similar to ‘'ignore’`, with the exception that this default will not ignore the files within a directory that begins with a dot, for backward-compatibility.

#### end

Byte offset at which the stream ends, defaults to the length of the file minus 1. The end is inclusive in the stream, meaning `end: 3` will include the 4th byte in the stream.

#### etag

Enable or disable etag generation, defaults to true.

#### extensions

If a given file doesn't exist, try appending one of the given extensions, in the given order. By default, this is disabled (set to `false`). An example value that will serve extension-less HTML files: ‘['html’, 'htm']`. This is skipped if the requested file already has an extension.

#### immutable

Enable or diable the `immutable` directive in the `Cache-Control` response header, defaults to `false`. If set to `true`, the `maxAge` option should also be specified to enable caching. The `immutable` directive will prevent supported clients from making conditional requests during the life of the `maxAge` option to check if the file has changed.

#### index

By default send supports "index.html" files, to disable this set `false` or to supply a new index pass a string or an array in preferred order.

#### lastModified

Enable or disable `Last-Modified` header, defaults to true. Uses the file system's last modified value.

#### maxAge

Provide a max-age in milliseconds for http caching, defaults to 0. This can also be a string accepted by the ms module.

#### root

Serve files relative to `path`.

#### start

Byte offset at which the stream starts, defaults to 0. The start is inclusive, meaning `start: 2` will include the 3rd byte in the stream.

### Events

The `SendStream` is an event emitter and will emit the following events:

- `error` an error occurred `(err)`
- `directory` a directory was requested `(res, path)`
- `file` a file was requested `(path, stat)`
- `headers` the headers are about to be set on a file `(res, path, stat)`
- `stream` file streaming has started `(stream)`
- `end` streaming has completed

### .pipe

The `pipe` method is used to pipe the response into the Node.js HTTP response object, typically `send(req, path, options).pipe(res)`.

## .mime

The `mime` export is the global instance of of the `mime` npm module.

This is used to configure the MIME types that are associated with file extensions as well as other options for how to resolve the MIME type of a file (like the default type to use for an unknown file extension).

# 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
$ npm test

# Examples

## Serve a specific file

This simple example will send a specific file to all requests.

var http = require('http')
var send = require('send')
var server = http.createServer(function onRequest (req, res) {
send(req, '/path/to/index.html')
.pipe(res)
})
server.listen(3000)

## Serve all files from a directory

This simple example will just serve up all the files in a given directory as the top-level. For example, a request `GET /foo.txt` will send back `/www/public/foo.txt`.

var http = require('http')
var parseUrl = require('parseurl')
var send = require('send')
var server = http.createServer(function onRequest (req, res) {
send(req, parseUrl(req).pathname, { root: '/www/public' })
.pipe(res)
})
server.listen(3000)

## Custom file types

var http = require('http')
var parseUrl = require('parseurl')
var send = require('send')
// Default unknown types to text/plain
send.mime.default_type = 'text/plain'
// Add a custom type
send.mime.define({
'application/x-my-type': ['x-mt', 'x-mtt']
})
var server = http.createServer(function onRequest (req, res) {
send(req, parseUrl(req).pathname, { root: '/www/public' })
.pipe(res)
})
server.listen(3000)

## Custom directory index view

This is a example of serving up a structure of directories with a custom function to render a listing of a directory.

var http = require('http')
var fs = require('fs')
var parseUrl = require('parseurl')
var send = require('send')
// Transfer arbitrary files from within /www/example.com/public/*
// with a custom handler for directory listing
var server = http.createServer(function onRequest (req, res) {
send(req, parseUrl(req).pathname, { index: false, root: '/www/public' })
.once('directory', directory)
.pipe(res)
})
server.listen(3000)
// Custom directory handler
function directory (res, path) {
var stream = this
// redirect to trailing slash for consistent url
if (!stream.hasTrailingSlash()) {
return stream.redirect(path)
}
// get directory list
fs.readdir(path, function onReaddir (err, list) {
if (err) return stream.error(err)
// render an index for the directory
res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain; charset=UTF-8')
res.end(list.join('\n') + '\n')
})
}

## Serving from a root directory with custom error-handling

var http = require('http')
var parseUrl = require('parseurl')
var send = require('send')
var server = http.createServer(function onRequest (req, res) {
// your custom error-handling logic:
function error (err) {
res.statusCode = err.status || 500
res.end(err.message)
}
// your custom headers
function headers (res, path, stat) {
// serve all files for download
res.setHeader('Content-Disposition', 'attachment')
}
// 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, parseUrl(req).pathname, { root: '/www/public' })
.on('error', error)
.on('directory', redirect)
.on('headers', headers)
.pipe(res)
})
server.listen(3000)

# License

[MIT](LICENSE)