Unable to display website using Firebase Hosting

Question

I am trying to host my dynamic Node.js website using Firebase Hosting but I am having difficulty based on my file structure. Here is what is looks like:

In my code, I am not using an index.html file but when I ran firebase init it automatically created one for me along with a 404.html file. When I deploy my code, only index.html file seems to execute. But when I try deploying after deleting the index.html file, I can see the 404.html file.

This is the firebase.json file. that I am using:

{
  "hosting": {
    "public": "public",
    "ignore": [
      "firebase.json",
      "**/.*",
      "**/node_modules/**"
    ]
  }
}

None of the files in the 'public/html' folder seem to be executing. I tried changing the public field to public/html in the firebase.json file but then I can only see Cannot GET / when deployed. How do I run the files in the 'public/html' folder when deploying along with the js files in the 'src/js' folder?

I have an error.html file in my code which is located under 'public/html/main'. If I want to use it besides the 404.html file, will I have to place in directly inside the public folder?

Additionally, I also have a lot of backend files. In order to use those, do I need to use some other service offered by firebase or that can be accomplished by using Firebase Hosting itself?

Answer 1

With Firebase Hosting, if you want to see web content when you load the "/" path, you will need a file called "index.html" in your public directory. It will not look in subdirectories. By default, with the configuration you're showing, all the paths are served relative to public.

It's hard to tell what you're expecting to work differently. If you want to refer to foo.html nested under html, then your path will need to be "/html/foo.html". If you want to change the hosting configuration to do something different, I suggest looking over the documentation.