net/http: mention StripPrefix in FileServer section

[gopherbot]

by sedaAK:

I wanted to put my /static subdirectory up as http://mysite/static, so I did the
following:

http.Handle("/static/",
http.FileServer(http.Dir("/projects/static")))

However browsing to http://mysite/static resolving to /projects/static/static, which
didn't exist.

So the code that ended up working is:
http.Handle("/static/", http.FileServer(http.Dir("/projects/")))

That looks totally wrong to me and causes a major limitation.  I want to say, mount this
directory there, not take this url path, then add it on to the filepath I give.   What
if I wanted the urlpath to not match the filepath?   If I want to call
http://mysite/somefiles and map it to /projects/someonesfolder  then I would be out of
luck and have to use some other muxer.

[gopherbot]

Comment 1 by sedaAK:

kevlar directed me to http.StripPrefix to resolve my issue.  I still think this is
counter-intuitive.  I can't conceive of a situation where the prefix being passed to the
filesystem helps a coders understanding.

[minux]

Comment 2:

We can't change the behavior of http.FileServer now (it's frozen by Go 1 release), but
we can
mention StripPrefix in the documentation of http.Server.
http://golang.org/cl/6032052

Labels changed: added priority-later, documentation, removed priority-triage.

Status changed to Accepted.

[gopherbot]

Comment 3 by sedaAK:

thanks :-), if it mentioned that in the documentation it would have saved me the agony. 
The docs only give the example of the simplest case, mounting the file system at "/", so
either an example using StripPrefix when using /otherfolder or some other mention.

[rsc]

Comment 4:

It seems great to add an example for FileServer that uses StripPrefix during the
registration.

[minux]

Comment 5:

This issue was closed by revision acb5505.

Status changed to Fixed.

[minux]

Comment 6:

This issue was closed by revision 2fce9be95aab.