> curl localhost:8080/simple.html -v

*   Trying ::1..
* connect to ::1 port 8080 failed: Connection refused
*   Trying 127.0.0.1...
* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 8080
> GET /simple.html HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8080
> User-Agent: curl/7.43.0
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Last-Modified: Fri Jun 12 2015 02:51:29 GMT-0700 (PDT)
< Cache-Control: max-age=60, must-revalidate, public
< Expires: Sun, 15 Nov 2015 02:07:46 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html
< Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type
< Access-Control-Allow-Methods: HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, OPTIONS, TRACE
< Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
< X-Powered-By: Actionhero API
< Set-Cookie: sessionID=d4453f54ff066a2ef078e5c80f18dc78a81f44ff;path=/;expires=Sun, 15 Nov 2015 03:06:46 GMT;
< Content-Length: 101
< Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2015 02:06:46 GMT
< Connection: keep-alive
<
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact

<h1>Actionhero</h1>\nI am a flat file being served to you via the API from ./public/simple.html<br />

Actionhero comes with a file server which clients can make use of to request files from the Actionhero server. Actionhero is not meant to be a 'rendering' server, but can serve static files.

If a directory is requested rather than a file, Actionhero will look for the file in that directory defined by config.commonWeb.directoryFileType (which defaults to index.html). Failing to find this file, an error will be returned defined in config.general.flatFileIndexPageNotFoundMessage

You can use the await staticFile.get(connection) in your actions (where the response object contains error, fileStream, mime, and length). Note that fileStream is a stream which can be pipe'd to a client. You can use this in actions if you wish.

On unix/OSX operating systems, symlinks for both files and folders will be followed.

• Cache-Control and Expires or respectively ETag headers (depending on configuration) will be sent with it's caching or revalidation time defined by config.web.flatFileCacheDuration
• Content-Types for files will attempt to be determined using the mime package
• Web clients may request connection.params.file directly within an action which makes use of api.sendFile, or if they are under the config.web.urlPathForFiles route, the file will be looked up as if the route matches the directory structure under flatFileDirectory.

• the param file should be used to request a path
• file.content's data is sent raw, and is likely to contain binary content and line breaks. Parse your responses accordingly!

// send a file
async run (data) {
  data.connection.sendFile('/path/to/file.mp3')
  data.toRender = false
}

// send 404 (web connection)
async run (data) {
  data.connection.rawConnection.responseHttpCode = 404;
  data.connection.sendFile('404.html')
  data.toRender = false
}

You can send files from within actions using connection.sendFile().

Note that you can optionally modify responseCodes (for HTTP clients only). Be sure to set toRender = false in the callback, as you have already sent data to the client, and probably don't want to do so again on a file request. If you try to sendFile on a path that doesn't exist (within your public directory), the 404 header will be handled automatically for you.

Actionhero will check all paths defined by config.general.paths.public for files, in the order they are specified via that option, then check any public paths of your plugins. Actionhero's file server will not serve files outside of the directories enumerated by config.general.paths.public for security.