connect-history-api-fallback 2.0.0

The connect-history-api-fallback is a handy middleware used to proxy requests through a specified index page. Its primary utility is for handling Single Page Applications (SPAs) that make use of the HTML5 History API. It provides a fallback mechanism for non-existing directories, hence enabling the usage of the HTML 5 History API. This prevents issues where the user refreshes the page or directly accesses a page other than the index.html, which would usually result in a 404 Not Found error. Therefore, it changes the requested location to a specified index whenever a GET or HEAD request that accepts text/html is made and is neither a direct file request nor matches a pattern specified in options.rewrites.

To use connect-history-api-fallback, it needs to be installed from NPM and added as a middleware to the application. Here is a simple usage example:

// Step 1: Install via NPM
npm install --save connect-history-api-fallback

// Step 2: Import the library
var history = require('connect-history-api-fallback');

// Step 3: Add the middleware to your application
var connect = require('connect');

var app = connect()
  .use(history())
  .listen(3000);

It can also be incorporated into an express application as follows:

var express = require('express');

var app = express();
app.use(history());

Additionally, options can be passed to the library to override the default settings. These include the index, rewrites, verbosity, htmlAcceptHeaders, and disabling the dot rule.

The documentation for connect-history-api-fallback can be found in the README file of its GitHub repository, which is located at https://github.com/bripkens/connect-history-api-fallback. The documentation provides a comprehensive overview of the library, outlining its usage, ways to customize it with options, and how to include it in your application. It's a useful resource for anyone looking to leverage this package in their web applications.