Go HTTP static files
last modified April 11, 2024
In this article we show how to set up HTTP servers in Go to serve static files.
$ go version go version go1.22.2 linux/amd64
We use Go version 1.22.2.
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP protocol is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web.
The net/http package provides HTTP client and server
implementations and is used to create GET and POST requests.
Static files are files that do not change. They include CSS files, JavaScript files and images; also plain HTML files which do not contain template directives.
The http.FileServer is used to serve static files. It returns a
handler that serves HTTP requests with the contents of the file system.
Serving static files
In the first example, we serve HTML files which include an image and a CSS file.
go.mod main.go public ├── about.html ├── css │ └── format.css ├── img │ └── sid.png └── index.html
This is the project structure.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/format.css">
<title>About</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>About page</h2>
<p>
<a href="/">Home page</a>
</p>
</body>
</html>
This is the about.html file.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/format.css">
<title>Home page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Home page</h2>
<p>
<a href="about.html">About page</a>
</p>
<figure>
<img src="img/sid.png" alt="Sid the sloth">
<figcaption>Sid the sloth</figcaption>
</figure>
</body>
</html>
This is the index.html page.
* {
font-size: medium;
background-color:#2c2b2b ;
color: #e6d7d7;
}
This is the CSS file.
package main
import (
"net/http"
)
func main() {
fs := http.FileServer(http.Dir("./public"))
http.Handle("/", fs)
http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}
We set up the server. The static files are read from the public
directory.
Go serve image example
In the following example, we use template files to dynamically generate pages. Along the template system, we set up serving static files for the CSS file, that is included in the template file.
go.mod
main.go
public
└── css
└── format.css
templates
└── layout.html
This is the project structure.
table {
border-top: 1px solid #999;
border-left: 1px solid #999;
border-collapse: collapse;
}
td, th {
padding: 5px;
border-right: 1px solid #999;
border-bottom: 1px solid #999;
}
tr:nth-child(2) {
background-color: #c1f5f7;
}
We have some css code to style the HTML table.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="public/css/format.css">
<title>Users</title>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>User</th>
<th>Occupation</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
{{ range . }}
<tr>
<td>{{ .Name }}</td>
<td>{{ .Occupation }}</td>
</tr>
{{ end }}
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>
In the template file, we have directives which merge the passed data into
the HTML table. The format.css file is included in the template
and is served as a static resource.
package main
import (
"html/template"
"net/http"
"os"
)
type User struct {
Name string
Occupation string
}
func main() {
fs := http.FileServer(http.Dir("public"))
http.Handle("/public/", http.StripPrefix("/public/", fs))
http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
tmpl := template.Must(template.ParseFiles("templates/layout.html"))
data := []User{
{Name: "John Doe", Occupation: "gardener"},
{Name: "Roger Roe", Occupation: "driver"},
{Name: "Thomas Green", Occupation: "teacher"},
}
tmpl.Execute(w, data)
})
http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}
In the code example, we set up serving static files and the template engine.
fs := http.FileServer(http.Dir("public"))
http.Handle("/public/", http.StripPrefix("/public/", fs))
The static resources come from the public directory.
http.HandleFunc("/", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
tmpl := template.Must(template.ParseFiles("templates/layout.html"))
data := []User{
{Name: "John Doe", Occupation: "gardener"},
{Name: "Roger Roe", Occupation: "driver"},
{Name: "Thomas Green", Occupation: "teacher"},
}
tmpl.Execute(w, data)
})
Every resource that is not served from the public directory is
managed with a template engine. In the anonymous function, we parse the
layout.html file with template.parseFiles and
merge it with the data.
Source
Go net/http package - reference
In this article we have showed how to work with static resources in Golang.
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