how to connect appjs to nodejs server and show its content

Question

I want to show the content of my website in the appjs window, but I dont know how.

In the appjs script there are app.serveFilesFrom(__dirname + '/content'); to say where the content is, that it has to show, but I dont want it local, I want it to show the content of my website, running by a node.js serverscript.

I have tried this https://github.com/appjs/appjs/wiki/Using-express-to-handle-local-http-requests and some of the methods from the express.js documentation but unsuccessfully.

Therefore I ask here, have somebody an idea, how to do this?

Are you asking how to download remote content from your website with your `Node.js` app and deliver the content with it? — fardjad, Feb 14 '13 at 17:28
No, not download. As if the browser would be app.js. It just show the content from my node server. — RedDot, Feb 14 '13 at 19:45

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 14 '13 at 11:16

To have you website displayed within AppJS window like a web browser, which is one of the primary intents of AppJS, you can take any one of these two (2) steps;

Create an IFRAME (that fills up the width and height) in the index.html file located at "data/content/".

Set the IFRAME SRC to your website url.

e.g. < iframe src="http://www.YourWebsite.com">

This will display your website in AppJS window when app.exe is started.

NOTE: You might want to use CSS to make the iframe fill up 100% width and 100% height of the window.
Change the line of code at "data/node_modules/appjs/lib/settings.js"

FROM

url :'ht tp://appjs',

TO

url: 'http://www.YourWebsite.com'

Most of the time I opt for the first option as it allows me do a whole lot of things using CSS. And this includes placing an animated GIF at the background of the IFRAME to indicate page loading at start up.

I go for the second option only when I want to make my actual website url a little trickier to find during an attempted hack. While still leaving the "data/content" directory and its content undeleted.

I hope this answers.

Thumbs up for easy and clean iframe solution – Timo Ernst Jul 06 '15 at 22:18 — Timo Ernst, Jul 06 '15 at 22:18

fardjad · Answer 2 · 2013-02-15T08:16:58.510

I hope I understood your question correctly, you can actually make a proxy request and pipe it's response to your app response.

var http = require("http");
var express = require("express");
var app = express();

var options = {
    host: "stackoverflow.com",
    port: 80,
    path: "/",
    method: "GET",
    headers: {}
};

app.get("/stackoverflow*", function (request, response) {
    "use strict";

    var proxyRequest;

    options.headers.cookie = request.headers.cookie;
    options.headers["user-agent"] = request.headers["user-agent"];

    // TODO set other headers if needed

    options.path = "/" + request.path.split("/").slice(2).join("/");
    options.method = request.method;

    proxyRequest = http.request(options, function (proxyResponse) {
        proxyResponse.pipe(response);
    });

    request.pipe(proxyRequest);
}).listen(8080);

Now you can navigate to http://localhost:8080/stackoverflow/questions/14880557/how-to-connect-appjs-to-nodejs-server-and-show-its-content/14890268#14890268 and your app will show the requested path from stackoverflow.com.

how to connect appjs to nodejs server and show its content

2 Answers2