Simplest Node.js server is just:

$ npm install http-server -g

Now you can run a server via the following commands:

$ cd MyApp

$ http-server

If you're using NPM 5.2.0 or newer, you can use http-server without installing it with npx. This isn't recommended for use in production but is a great way to quickly get a server running on localhost.

$ npx http-server

Or, you can try this, which opens your web browser and enables CORS requests:

$ http-server -o --cors

For more options, check out the documentation for http-server on GitHub, or run:

$ http-server --help

Lots of other nice features and brain-dead-simple deployment to NodeJitsu.

Feature Forks

Of course, you can easily top up the features with your own fork. You might find it's already been done in one of the existing 800+ forks of this project:

Light Server: An Auto Refreshing Alternative

A nice alternative to http-server is light-server. It supports file watching and auto-refreshing and many other features.

$ npm install -g light-server 
$ light-server

Add to your directory context menu in Windows Explorer

 reg.exe add HKCR\Directory\shell\LightServer\command /ve /t REG_EXPAND_SZ /f /d "\"C:\nodejs\light-server.cmd\" \"-o\" \"-s\" \"%V\""

Simple JSON REST server

If you need to create a simple REST server for a prototype project then json-server might be what you're looking for.

Auto Refreshing Editors

Most web page editors and IDE tools now include a web server that will watch your source files and auto refresh your web page when they change.

I use Live Server with Visual Studio Code.

The open source text editor Brackets also includes a NodeJS static web server. Just open any HTML file in Brackets, press "Live Preview" and it starts a static server and opens your browser at the page. The browser will auto refresh whenever you edit and save the HTML file. This especially useful when testing adaptive web sites. Open your HTML page on multiple browsers/window sizes/devices. Save your HTML page and instantly see if your adaptive stuff is working as they all auto refresh.

Web / SPA / PWA / Mobile / Desktop / Browser Ext Web Developers

Some SPA frameworks include a built in version of the Webpack DevServer that can detect source file changes and trigger an incremental rebuild and patch (called hot reloading) of your SPA or PWA web app. Here's a few popular SPA frameworks that can do this.

VueJS Developers

For VueJS developers, a favorite is Quasar Framework that includes the Webpack DevServer out of the box with switches to support server-side rendering (SSR) and proxy rules to cure your CORS issues. It includes a large number of optimized components designed to adapt for both Mobile and Desktop. These allows you to build one app for ALL platforms (SPA, SPA+SSR, PWA, PWA+SSR, Cordova and Capacitor Mobile AppStore apps, Electron Desktop Node+VueJS apps and even Browser extensions).

Another popular one is NuxtJS that also supports static HTML/CSS code generation as well as SSR or no-SSR build modes with plugins for other UI component suites.

React Framework Developers

ReactJS developers can also setup hot reloading.

Cordova/Capacitor + Ionic Framework Developers

Iconic is a mobile only hybrid component framework that now supports VueJS, React and Angular development. A local server with auto refresh features is baked into the ionic tool. Just run ionic serve from your app folder. Even better ... ionic serve --lab to view auto-refreshing side by side views of both iOS and Android.

Note: This answer is from 2011. However, it is still valid.

You can use Connect and ServeStatic with Node.js for this:

1. Install connect and serve-static with NPM

    $ npm install connect serve-static
   

2. Create server.js file with this content:

    var connect = require('connect');
    var serveStatic = require('serve-static');
   
    connect()
        .use(serveStatic(__dirname))
        .listen(8080, () => console.log('Server running on 8080...'));
   

3. Run with Node.js

    $ node server.js
   

You can now go to

Check out this gist. I'm reproducing it here for reference, but the gist has been regularly updated.

Node.JS static file web server. Put it in your path to fire up servers in any directory, takes an optional port argument.

var http = require("http"),
    url = require("url"),
    path = require("path"),
    fs = require("fs"),
    port = process.argv[2] || 8888;

http.createServer(function(request, response) {

  var uri = url.parse(request.url).pathname
    , filename = path.join(process.cwd(), uri);

  fs.exists(filename, function(exists) {
    if(!exists) {
      response.writeHead(404, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
      response.write("404 Not Found\n");
      response.end();
      return;
    }

    if (fs.statSync(filename).isDirectory()) filename += '/index.html';

    fs.readFile(filename, "binary", function(err, file) {
      if(err) {        
        response.writeHead(500, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
        response.write(err + "\n");
        response.end();
        return;
      }

      response.writeHead(200);
      response.write(file, "binary");
      response.end();
    });
  });
}).listen(parseInt(port, 10));

console.log("Static file server running at\n  => " + port + "/\nCTRL + C to shutdown");

Update

The gist does handle css and js files. I've used it myself. Using read/write in "binary" mode isn't a problem. That just means that the file isn't interpreted as text by the file library and is unrelated to content-type returned in the response.

The problem with your code is you're always returning a content-type of "text/plain". The above code does not return any content-type, but if you're just using it for HTML, CSS, and JS, a browser can infer those just fine. No content-type is better than a wrong one.

Normally the content-type is a configuration of your web server. So I'm sorry if this doesn't solve your problem, but it worked for me as a simple development server and thought it might help some other people. If you do need correct content-types in the response, you either need to explicitly define them as joeytwiddle has or use a library like Connect that has sensible defaults. The nice thing about this is that it's simple and self-contained (no dependencies).

But I do feel your issue. So here is the combined solution.

var http = require("http"),
    url = require("url"),
    path = require("path"),
    fs = require("fs")
    port = process.argv[2] || 8888;

http.createServer(function(request, response) {

  var uri = url.parse(request.url).pathname
    , filename = path.join(process.cwd(), uri);

  var contentTypesByExtension = {
    '.html': "text/html",
    '.css':  "text/css",
    '.js':   "text/javascript"
  };

  fs.exists(filename, function(exists) {
    if(!exists) {
      response.writeHead(404, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
      response.write("404 Not Found\n");
      response.end();
      return;
    }

    if (fs.statSync(filename).isDirectory()) filename += '/index.html';

    fs.readFile(filename, "binary", function(err, file) {
      if(err) {        
        response.writeHead(500, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
        response.write(err + "\n");
        response.end();
        return;
      }

      var headers = {};
      var contentType = contentTypesByExtension[path.extname(filename)];
      if (contentType) headers["Content-Type"] = contentType;
      response.writeHead(200, headers);
      response.write(file, "binary");
      response.end();
    });
  });
}).listen(parseInt(port, 10));

console.log("Static file server running at\n  => " + port + "/\nCTRL + C to shutdown");

You don't need express. You don't need connect. Node.js does http NATIVELY. All you need to do is return a file dependent on the request:

var http = require('http')
var url = require('url')
var fs = require('fs')

http.createServer(function (request, response) {
    var requestUrl = url.parse(request.url)    
    response.writeHead(200)
    fs.createReadStream(requestUrl.pathname).pipe(response)  // do NOT use fs's sync methods ANYWHERE on production (e.g readFileSync) 
}).listen(9615)    

A more full example that ensures requests can't access files underneath a base-directory, and does proper error handling:

var http = require('http')
var url = require('url')
var fs = require('fs')
var path = require('path')
var baseDirectory = __dirname   // or whatever base directory you want

var port = 9615

http.createServer(function (request, response) {
    try {
        var requestUrl = url.parse(request.url)

        // need to use path.normalize so people can't access directories underneath baseDirectory
        var fsPath = baseDirectory+path.normalize(requestUrl.pathname)

        var fileStream = fs.createReadStream(fsPath)
        fileStream.pipe(response)
        fileStream.on('open', function() {
             response.writeHead(200)
        })
        fileStream.on('error',function(e) {
             response.writeHead(404)     // assume the file doesn't exist
             response.end()
        })
   } catch(e) {
        response.writeHead(500)
        response.end()     // end the response so browsers don't hang
        console.log(e.stack)
   }
}).listen(port)

console.log("listening on port "+port)

I think the part you're missing right now is that you're sending:

Content-Type: text/plain

If you want a web browser to render the HTML, you should change this to:

Content-Type: text/html

Step1 (inside command prompt [I hope you cd TO YOUR FOLDER]) : npm install express

Step 2: Create a file server.js

var fs = require("fs");
var host = "127.0.0.1";
var port = 1337;
var express = require("express");

var app = express();
app.use(express.static(__dirname + "/public")); //use static files in ROOT/public folder

app.get("/", function(request, response){ //root dir
    response.send("Hello!!");
});

app.listen(port, host);

Please note, you should add WATCHFILE (or use nodemon) too. Above code is only for a simple connection server.

STEP 3: node server.js or nodemon server.js

There is now more easy method if you just want host simple HTTP server. npm install -g http-server

and open our directory and type http-server

The fast way:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();
app.use('/', express.static(__dirname + '/../public')); // ← adjust
app.listen(3000, function() { console.log('listening'); });

Your way:

var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
    console.dir(req.url);

    // will get you  '/' or 'index.html' or 'css/styles.css' ...
    // • you need to isolate extension
    // • have a small mimetype lookup array/object
    // • only there and then reading the file
    // •  delivering it after setting the right content type

    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});

    res.end('ok');
}).listen(3001);

Rather than dealing with a switch statement, I think it's neater to lookup the content type from a dictionary:

var contentTypesByExtension = {
    'html': "text/html",
    'js':   "text/javascript"
};

...

    var contentType = contentTypesByExtension[fileExtension] || 'text/plain';

You can just type those in your shell

npx serve

Repo: .

This is basically an updated version of the accepted answer for connect version 3:

var connect = require('connect');
var serveStatic = require('serve-static');

var app = connect();

app.use(serveStatic(__dirname, {'index': ['index.html']}));
app.listen(3000);

I also added a default option so that index.html is served as a default.

You don't need to use any NPM modules to run a simple server, there's a very tiny library called "NPM Free Server" for Node:

• NPM Free Server on GitHub

50 lines of code, outputs if you are requesting a file or a folder and gives it a red or green color if it failed for worked. Less than 1KB in size (minified).

if you have node installed on you PC probably you have the NPM, if you don't need NodeJS stuff, you can use the serve package for this:

1 - Install the package on your PC:

npm install -g serve

2 - Serve your static folder:

serve <path> 
d:> serve d:\StaticSite

It will show you which port your static folder is being served, just navigate to the host like:

I found a interesting library on npm that might be of some use to you. It's called mime(npm install mime or ) and it can determine the mime type of a file. Here's an example of a webserver I wrote using it:

var mime = require("mime"),http = require("http"),fs = require("fs");
http.createServer(function (req, resp) {
path  = unescape(__dirname + req.url)
var code = 200
 if(fs.existsSync(path)) {
    if(fs.lstatSync(path).isDirectory()) {
        if(fs.existsSync(path+"index.html")) {
        path += "index.html"
        } else {
            code = 403
            resp.writeHead(code, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
            resp.end(code+" "+http.STATUS_CODES[code]+" "+req.url);
        }
    }
    resp.writeHead(code, {"Content-Type": mime.lookup(path)})
    fs.readFile(path, function (e, r) {
    resp.end(r);

})
} else {
    code = 404
    resp.writeHead(code, {"Content-Type":"text/plain"});
    resp.end(code+" "+http.STATUS_CODES[code]+" "+req.url);
}
console.log("GET "+code+" "+http.STATUS_CODES[code]+" "+req.url)
}).listen(9000,"localhost");
console.log("Listening at ")

This will serve any regular text or image file (.html, .css, .js, .pdf, .jpg, .png, .m4a and .mp3 are the extensions I've tested, but it theory it should work for everything)

Developer Notes

Here is an example of output that I got with it:

Listening at 
GET 200 OK /cloud
GET 404 Not Found /cloud/favicon.ico
GET 200 OK /cloud/icon.png
GET 200 OK /
GET 200 OK /501.png
GET 200 OK /cloud/manifest.json
GET 200 OK /config.log
GET 200 OK /export1.png
GET 200 OK /Chrome3DGlasses.pdf
GET 200 OK /cloud
GET 200 OK /-1
GET 200 OK /Delta-Vs_for_inner_Solar_System.svg

Notice the unescape function in the path construction. This is to allow for filenames with spaces and encoded characters.

Edit:

Node.js sample app Node Chat has the functionality you want.
In it's README.textfile
3. Step is what you are looking for.

step1

• create a server that responds with hello world on port 8002

step2

• create an index.html and serve it

step3

• introduce util.js
• change the logic so that any static file is served
• show 404 in case no file is found

step4

• add jquery-1.4.2.js
• add client.js
• change index.html to prompt user for nickname

Here is the server.js

Here is the util.js

var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');
var index = fs.readFileSync('index.html');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
    // change the to 'text/plain' to 'text/html' it will work as your index page
    res.end(index);
}).listen(9615);

I think you where searching for this. In your index.html, simply fill it with normal html code - whatever you want to render on it, like:

<html>
    <h1>Hello world</h1>
</html>

The way I do it is to first of all install node static server globally via

npm install node-static -g

then navigate to the directory that contains your html files and start the static server with static.

Go to the browser and type localhost:8080/"yourHtmlFile".

Basically copying the accepted answer, but avoiding creating a js file.

$ node
> var connect = require('connect'); connect().use(static('.')).listen(8000);

Found it very convinient.