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Assignment 4

Assignment and Code Blog Entry due at 11:59pm on Monday 11/14/2022
This assignment will not be demoed

The goal of this assignment is to start to use Node.js and some of its built-in modules to build a very simple web server that serves static content.

You are provided with several files in public/ implementing the Benny's List site we've been working on throughout the course, with the exception of index.js. If you opened the index.html file in your browser, you'd see the site you're familiar with by now, with all of its styling and, when you add your own index.js file, its interactions. In addition to your familiar files, you're also provided with a file 404.html, whose purpose we'll get to in a bit.

The file server.js is the file you'll work on for this assignment. Your job is to complete that file to implement a very basic Node-based web server that satisfies the following requirements:

  • First, add your name and oregonstate.edu email address to the header comment in server.js, so the TA grading your assignment knows who you are.

  • The server can only use Node's built-in modules (e.g. http, fs, path, etc.), no third-party modules.

  • The server should listen for requests on the port specified by the environment variable PORT. If PORT is not present in the environment, the server should listen on port 3000 by default.

  • When someone requests a path from your server that corresponds to the name of one of the files in public/ (including 404.html), your server should respond with the contents of that file and a status code of 200. In addition, the server's response should have the Content-Type header set to the appropriate value for the type of file being sent (i.e. "text/html" for an HTML file, "text/css" for a CSS file, "application/javascript" for a JS file, and "image/jpeg" for a JPEG image file). For example, if you run your server on port 3000 on your laptop, you should be able to access the following files by entering the following URLs into your browser:

    Note that if everything is hooked up correctly, your index.html and 404.html pages will automatically have styles and interactions from style.css and index.js applied to them because the browser will see those files referenced from the HTML and make additional requests for those files.

  • When someone requests the root path (i.e. /) from your server, it should respond with the contents of public/index.html and a status code of 200. For example, if you run your server on port 3000 on your laptop and visit http://localhost:3000 in your laptop's browser, your server should send the contents of public/index.html.

  • If someone visits a path on your site that does not correspond to the name of any of the files in public/, your server should respond with the contents of public/404.html and a status code of 404. For example, if you run your server on port 3000 on your laptop and visit http://localhost:3000/thispagedoesnotexist in your laptop's browser, your server should serve the contents of public/404.html.

  • Your server should read any given file in public/ from disk only once. In other words, the contents of each file should be stored in the server's memory (e.g. stored in a variable) after the first read, and the server should use this stored value when responding with a file's contents instead of reading the file a second time. In other words, after you read a file from disk once, you should always read it from memory thereafter. You should add a console.log() statement immediately before each call to read a file to prove to yourself that each file is being read only once.

Note that the contents of index.js in this repo are incomplete. If you want to see the full site in action, including the interactions you implemented for assignment 3, you can replace the contents of public/index.js with your index.js from assignment 3. However, no part of your grade for this assignment will be based on changes to index.js. For this assignment, it only matters that you correctly serve the contents of public/index.js, whatever they are.

Tips/Hints

Here are a few tips/hints to help you out with the assignment:

  • One big difference between the HTML files in the public/ directory for this assignment and the HTML files you've worked with for previous assignments is the URLs used to include CSS and JS files into the HTML. In particular, in this assignment, the URLs all start with a slash, e.g.:

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css" media="screen">

    instead of

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" media="screen">

    This is an important change now that we'll be serving these files, but it'll mean that if you open the HTML files directly in your browser like you did before (i.e. opening them using a file:///... URL), you won't see the styles or JS applied. That's OK. Once you're properly serving the files, you should be able to see the styled pages again using http://... URLs like the ones above.

  • To see an example of essentially the way your server should behave, you can use the serve package from npm to run a static server based on the contents of the public/ directory. This command will do that for newer versions of Node.js:

    npx serve ./public/

    Then, you can use URLs similar to the ones above to see the files from public/ (note that serve runs on port 5000 by default). This will give you an idea of what your own server should do.

Code Blog

Add an entry to your Code Blog reflecting on your experience with this assignment. Here are some questions you could answer (though these aren't the only ones):

  • What was challenging about the assignment, and what specific kinds of problems did you have. How did you solve those problems?

  • What did you learn from the assignment? Were there any special insights you had? What did you find that you already knew?

  • What kinds of resources were helpful for completing the assignment? Specific websites? Lectures? The class Piazza forum? The TAs? How did you use each of these resources?

  • What are one or two things you had to Google to complete the assignment?

Submission

As always, we'll be using GitHub Classroom for this assignment, and you will submit your assignment via GitHub. Just make sure your completed files are committed and pushed by the assignment's deadline to the main branch of the GitHub repo that was created for you by GitHub Classroom. A good way to check whether your files are safely submitted is to look at the main branch your assignment repo on the github.com website (i.e. https://github.com/osu-cs290-f22/assignment-4-YourGitHubUsername/). If your changes show up there, you can consider your files submitted.

In addition to submitting your assignment via GitHub, you must submit the URL to your code blog entry (e.g. http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~YOUR_ONID_ID/cs290/blog.html) via Canvas by the due date specified above.

Grading criteria

Only changes to server.js will be considered when grading this assignment. Changes to other files will be ignored, though you should add the contents of your index.js from Assignment 3 to public/index.js to get the full effect of the assignment (your index.js won't actually be graded). Note also that when grading, we will not run npm install to install third-party modules, so if you used third-party modules in your solution, it probably won't work, and you'll get a bad grade.

The assignment is worth 100 points total:

  • 15 points: server listens on the port specified by the environment variable PORT or 3000 by default.

  • 50 points: server serves files from public/ with status 200 and correct Content-Type header when corresponding URL path is visited.

    • 10 points per file (including 404.html): 8 points for correctly serving file content and 2 points for correct Content-Type header and 200 status code

  • 10 points: server serves public/index.html with status 200 when the root URL path (/) is visited.

  • 15 points: server serves public/404.html with status 404 when a URL path not corresponding to any file in public/ is visited.

  • 10 points: server reads files in public/ exactly once and caches them.