Writing an HTTP server with the route package

We've already seen that creating an HTTP server isn't hard. We could handle different URLs with a few if statements:

var addr = InternetAddress.LOOPBACK_IP_V4;
var server = await HttpServer.bind(addr, port);
server.listen((HttpRequest request) {
  if (request.uri == '/contact') {
    // …
  } else if (request.uri == '/blog') {
    // …
  }
});

This would work and would be enough for very simple usage. However, you usually need to specify URIs with parameters and also serve static content. We can use the route package, which is an interesting package that works on both client and server sides. We'll use it here on the server side.

So, create a new project and add two dependencies: route and http_server. The second package contains the VirtualDirectory class that we'll use to make an entire directory available for URIs that don't match any route. Also, create a directory called public in the project's root, where we'll put all static content:

// bin...