Golang serve homepage and serve templated pages - url

Question

I'm looking to have a static landing page at url="/" and then have any files url="/"+file be served using a template.
I have the template working fine with this code
package main
import (
"html/template"
"log"
"net/http"
"os"
"path"
)
func main() {
fs := http.FileServer(http.Dir("static"))
http.Handle("/static/", http.StripPrefix("/static/", fs))
http.HandleFunc("/", serveTemplate)
log.Println("Listening...")
http.ListenAndServe(":5000", nil)
}
func serveTemplate(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
lp := path.Join("templates", "layout.html")
fp := path.Join("templates", r.URL.Path)
// Return a 404 if the template doesn't exist
info, err := os.Stat(fp)
if err != nil {
if os.IsNotExist(err) {
http.NotFound(w, r)
return
}
}
// Return a 404 if the request is for a directory
if info.IsDir() {
http.NotFound(w, r)
return
}
templates, err := template.ParseFiles(lp, fp)
if err != nil {
log.Print(err)
http.Error(w, "500 Internal Server Error", 500)
return
}
templates.ExecuteTemplate(w, "layout", nil)
}
So this works fine. Basically, I think I need to do two things. One, add another http.Handle or http.HandlerFunc in my main() function which handles a single html file, and then have my error checkers to redirect there instead of throwing a 404 error.
Please help how I may do this or provide a better solution?

Answer 1

I'd suggest reading through: http://golang.org/doc/articles/wiki/#tmp_6 - it covers much of this.
Specifically:
You are blocking on every request to read the file system (bad!);
You're then parsing your template files (slow) on every request;
Using a part of the URL path to directly read from the filesystem is a huge security problem (even if Go tries to escape it, expect someone to beat it). Be very careful about this
You should also parse your templates during program startup (i.e. at the start of your main()) once only. Read all the templates in ahead of time from a dir using tmpl := template.Must(template.ParseGlob("/dir")) - which will allow you to look-up your templates from your route. The html/template docs cover this well.
Note that you'll need to write some logic to catch when a template you are trying to match from the route does not exist in your handler.
I'd also look at using gorilla/mux if you want a few more features. You could write a not found handler that re-directs to / with a 302 (temp. re-direct) instead of raising a 404.
r := mux.NewRouter()
r.HandleFunc("/:name", nameHandler)
r.HandleFunc("/", rootHandler)
r.NotFoundHandler(redirectToRoot)
http.Handle("/", r)
log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":8000", nil))
func redirectToRoot(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
http.Redirect(w, r, "/", http.StatusSeeOther)
}
Hope that helps.