---
title: "A static file server in Go"
kind: article
slug: a-static-file-server-in-go
created_at: 2012-10-04
tags:
  - go
---
If you don't know Go, you should really look into it. Today I was trying to figure out how to write a simple (and fast) static file server in Go.

As it turns out, this is very easy to do. Go contains (in the `net/http` package) a nice `FileServer` type that can server files from the directory you point it to.

Here's a sweet and short example:

    :::go
    package main

    import (
        "net/http"
        "log"
    )

    func main() {
        err := http.ListenAndServe(":4242", http.FileServer(http.Dir("public")))
        if err != nil {
            log.Printf("Error running web server for static assets: %v", err)
        }
    }

By itself this is not very useful, but you can easily integrate this into any other http server you create, maybe for handling dynamic requests or doing web sockets.