Cannot call method 'toString' of null

[Emmerman]

http:572
  var statusLine = "HTTP/1.1 " + statusCode.toString() + " "

TypeError: Cannot call method 'toString' of null

For string 215
if (e) { return finish(null, {}) }

Maybe 404 instead null?

[yrn1]

Seen when calling serveFile('/', 200, {}, req, res)

[vdidenko]

Cat it be an instance of the https://github.com/cloudhead/node-static/issues#issue/4 issue?

[yrn1]

Yes, it is. The proposed fix in https://github.com/cloudhead/node-static/issues#issue/4 is also valid, but only for that case (wrong path). In general, you should never call finish(null, ...), because that will always result in the 'TypeError: Cannot call method 'toString' of null' error.

[metaleap]

Having the same issue. This generally happens if the path is not a file but a directory. Now we COULD check for this ourselves before calling serveFile(), however, that isn't the issue. This exception crashes node since it is uncaught and cannot be caught. Now say you have a live site running and it gets crawled? /files/foo/exist.txt may work fine so the crawler decides to fetch /files/foo/ , thanks to your custom /files/ handler node-static will serve this too and crash node because it is not a file.

So as I said we COULD check for this (dir or file?) ourselves but I actually tested this to see how node-static performs in case there is ANY error accessing the file. This could be wrong / changed file permissions or any other file access error. It DOES jump into my "error" listener, so far so good. I do the

resp.writeHead(500, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
resp.end(JSON.stringify(err));

thing and it gets executed. STILL what happens next is this:

http.js:832
var statusLine = 'HTTP/1.1 ' + statusCode.toString() + ' ' +
^
TypeError: Cannot call method 'toString' of null
at ServerResponse.writeHead (http.js:832:45)
at [object Object].finish (/home/foo/bar/node_modules/node-static.js:108:17)
at /home/foo/bar/node_modules/node-static.js:87:18
at /home/foo/bar/node_modules/node-static.js:215:33
at [object Object]. (/home/foo/bar/node_modules/node-static.js:245:17)
at [object Object].emit (events.js:64:17)
at afterRead (fs.js:858:12)

@cloudhead I have no problem fixing this myself for my local 0.5.3 for now but will this be fixed "officially" for 0.5.4 too? I'm sure it's just a one-line check-for-null/undefined... fingers crossed.