Simple HTTP Server and Router in node.js

handler.js

exports.createHandler = function (method) {
  return new Handler(method);
}

Handler = function(method) {
  this.process = function(req, res) {
    params = null;
    return method.apply(this, [req, res, params]);
  }
}

router.js

var handlerFactory = require('./handler');
var fs = require('fs');
var sys = require('sys');
var parser = require('url');
var handlers = {};

exports.clear = function() {
  handlers = {};
}

exports.register = function(url, method) {
  handlers[url] = handlerFactory.createHandler(method);
}

exports.route = function(req) {
  url = parser.parse(req.url, true);
  var handler = handlers[url.pathname];
  if (!handler) handler = this.missing(req)
  return handler;
}

exports.missing = function(req) {
  // Try to read the file locally, this is a security hole, yo /../../etc/passwd
  var url = parser.parse(req.url, true);
  var path = __dirname + "/public" + url.pathname
  try {    
    data = fs.readFileSync(path);
    mime = req.headers.accepts || 'text/html'
    return handlerFactory.createHandler(function(req, res) {
      res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': mime});
      res.write(data);
      res.close();
    });        
  } catch (e) { 
    return handlerFactory.createHandler(function(req, res) {
      res.writeHead(404, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
      res.write("No route registered for " + url.pathname);
      res.close();
    });      
  }  
}

server.js

var sys = require('sys');
var http = require('http');
var router = require('./router');

// Handle your routes here, put static pages in ./public and they will server
router.register('/', function(req, res) {
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
  res.write('Hello World');
  res.close();
});

// We need a server which relies on our router
var server = http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  handler = router.route(req);
  handler.process(req, res);
});

// Start it up
server.listen(8000);
sys.puts('Server running');

Express in several tests performs 3x, 4x times slower than raw node. If you need performance a server like this it's the best choose.

This is awesome dude.

can someone explain the security hole part? I don't understand why reading the file locally is a bad thing

(btw, I am rewriting this as ES6 and will share when done)

@thevaleriemack, there is a type of attack called "Path/Directory traversal" that can be run against the server easily and the attacker can get all your files.You can read more about it here

Created 9 years ago, works with small modifications now : ) Thank you @jeffrafter

thank you @mkanzit!

Thank god for stuff staying here forever. Years later and still relevant to some of us. I have a need for a project that require me to use just base packages for a small device. If you follow to my repo you will see the first version of it with the JS server. I am redoing it with more features and still node but using typescript to clean it up. I been looking for other ways to refactor it and this routing example is awesome. I will be borrowing a large portion of this refactoring template, maybe redoing a little to make it more tsc like. Awesome share.

Cool. Se need more of this lindo of native implementations!

This is great. I developed an implementation of a NodeJS http router here: https://github.com/ChukwuEmekaAjah/http-router
However, I haven't figured out how to handle static file handling. Great job mate.