Downloads index.html instead of serving it

[alexeychikk]

Steps to reproduce the issue, if applicable. Include the actual command and output and/or stack trace.

http-server ./dist

What did you expect to happen?

I expected to see rendered ./dist/index.html web page in the browser.
BUT instead browser opens save file dialog.

If the issue is a feature request, what is the motivation / use case for it?

Tell us about your environment

• exact http-server version: ^0.12.3
• Node version: 12.16.3
• Platform: Windows 10, Chrome 86.0.4240.75 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Other information (related issues, suggestions for a fix, etc):

[alexeychikk]

Fixed prepending the command with npx like this:
npx http-server ./dist

[thornjad]

@alexeychikk http-server and npx http-server should behave identically. How did you have it installed for the non-npx version?

[alexeychikk]

@thornjad I installed it with npm i -D http-server

[thornjad]

What does http-server --version output? I wonder if it's picking up an out-of-date globally-installed version. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

…

On Monday, October 12th, 2020 at 10:01 AM, Alex Zinkevych ***@***.***> wrote: ***@***.***(https://github.com/thornjad) I installed it with npm i -D http-server — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, [view it on GitHub](#657 (comment)), or [unsubscribe](https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEE3WDYOC4X6GPEZEHPFEOTSKMK57ANCNFSM4SLGI7VQ).

[alexeychikk]

@thornjad

PS D:\git\alexeychikk.github.io> http-server --version
http-server: The term 'http-server' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

PS D:\git\alexeychikk.github.io> npm run serve

> alexeychikk.github.io@1.0.0 serve D:\git\alexeychikk.github.io
> http-server --version

v0.12.3

[thornjad]

Hm, odd. Well I'm not sure what happened, and I have very little experience with Windows, so I don't know if there's any Windows-specific stuff going on there. I'm glad npx works! I'm partial to using npx most of the time anyway.

[izaleu]

I have the same issue, using npx did not fix it for me.

[zm3d3ni]

Try http://127.0.0.1:8080/index.html in windows

[vincentLW]

I have the same issue, using npx did not fix it for me.

try clear the cache for localhost:8080

[Cosy-harks]

I had this issue when I searched localhost:8080

Issue gone when I searched localhost:8080/index.html

[yuvalkabeli]

In case someone still has trouble (I tried everything I found online and still got stumped) I found this command:
http-server --proxy http://localhost:8080?
once I did this it opened up an HTML page with a menu for all the files in my project with each one having a separate address.
It's definitely not the best solution, but if you run out of options try it out!

[goldingdamien]

I had a similar issue where using port 8080 was causing a download of file "download" to be downloaded with the contents of the html file.
I couldn't fix it with anything here, but it was fixed by changing to port 8081.
It would be nice if someone could provide a reason for this issue.