The best way is to create a script that would automatically generate a sitemap. In a lot of cases, the URLs should be dynamic based on data from the database.
Great package for creating the sitemap in Express is sitemap package:
STEP 1
Create a middleware that will generate the sitemap dynamically and then cache it for each next call to the server. We can extract logic in separate file called sitemap_generator.js for example, and we can define and export generate_sitemap middleware for it:
const { SitemapStream, streamToPromise } = require('sitemap');
const { Readable } = require('stream');
let sitemap;
const generate_sitemap = async (req, res, next) => {
res.header('Content-Type', 'application/xml');
if (sitemap) return res.status(200).send(sitemap); // If we have a cached entry send it
let changefreq = 'weekly';
try {
let links = [
{ url: '', changefreq, priority: 1 },
{ url: 'aboutus', changefreq, priority: 0.9 },
{ url: 'blog', changefreq },
{ url: 'login', changefreq },
{ url: 'register', changefreq },
];
// Additionally, you can do database query and add more dynamic URLs to the "links" array.
const stream = new SitemapStream({ hostname: 'https://example.com', lastmodDateOnly: true })
return streamToPromise(Readable.from(links).pipe(stream)).then((data) => {
sitemap = data; // Cache the generated sitemap
stream.end();
return res.status(200).send(data.toString())
});
} catch (error) {
return res.status(500).end();
}
}
module.exports = { generate_sitemap };
STEP 2
Import generate_sitemap middleware from sitemap_generator.js in your server configuration file and mound it to the /sitemap.xml endpoint:
const { generate_sitemap } = require('./sitemap_generator');
...
app.get('/sitemap.xml', generate_sitemap);
That's it. Your sitemap should be available on /sitemap.xml endpoint now so navigate in the browser to that endpoint and check if it is there.
