Publish a single page app

Mainstream front-end frameworks such as React and Vue are single page applications: every URL serves the same document (usually index.html), and the JavaScript framework then routes to the matching page component.

Requesting a deep link such as /usr/info therefore asks for a file that does not exist, and the server returns 404.

1 The solution

Edit config/fast-https.json and add a try module to the location:

{
  "log_root": "./logs",
  "pid": "./fast-https.pid",
  "http": {
    "server": [
      {
        "listen": 8080,
        "server_name": "localhost",
        "location": [
          {
            "url": "/",
            "type": "local",
            "root": "./httpdoc/club.quwancode.com",
            "try": [
              {
                "uri": "^.*$",
                "file": ["index.html", "index.htm"],
                "next": "index.html"
              }
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    ],
    "include": [
      "./config/conf.d"
    ]
  }
}

Fast-Https supports a try module: when a request matches no rule, or the page resource cannot be found, the resource named by next is returned.

2 How the options work

try is an array evaluated in order; each entry has three fields:

{
  "try": [
    {
      "uri": "^.*$",
      "file": ["index.html"],
      "next": ""
    },
    {
      "uri": "^.*$",
      "file": ["index.htm"],
      "next": "404.html"
    }
  ]
}

Field	Description
`uri`	Regular expression matched against the request path. If it does not match and `next` is empty, the next entry is evaluated; if it does not match and `next` is set, `next` is returned
`file`	When `uri` matches, the default page is looked up in `file` in order
`next`	When set, returned if the page resource cannot be found

A single page app is just every unmatched path falling back to index.html. If your app uses hash routing (#/about), it works without any try configuration.

3 Verify

Save, RELOAD, open the root path, then refresh a deep link such as /user/info — it should load the page instead of returning 404.