Stylus middleware in Express not working? - express

Question

In app.coffee I have
stylus = require("stylus")
...
app.use stylus.middleware
debug: true
src: __dirname + "/stylus"
dest: __dirname + "/public/css"
compile: (src) ->
console.log(stylus(src))
return stylus(src)
I included the styles in layout.jade like:
link(rel="stylesheet", href="/css/styles.css")
But in Chrome network tab, I see canceled for styles.css why is that?
When I point the browser directly to /css/styles.css, I get
Cannot GET /css/styles.css
Whats wrong? How do I fix this?

Answer 1

Do you have the static middleware properly configured and working and positioned AFTER the stylus middleware in your middleware stack? The stylus middleware is just going to read the .styl file and write the corresponding .css file but it expects the static middleware to then find the .css file and serve it.
Also note that your src and dest file hierarchies should correspond directly. By that I mean even counting all intermediate directories if you list the recursive contents of one directory (ls -R or similar) then the ONLY difference should be src contains .styl files and dest contains exactly corresponding .css files. Don't tack a /css prefix onto one but not the other, for example.

Answer 2

Recently I run into the same issue and as long as #PeterLyons answer is correct I found that adding the extra slash after css directory name also seems to fix the problem.
(without coffee)
var stylus = require('stylus');
app.configure(function() {
app.use(stylus.middleware({
src: __dirname + '/stylus',
dest: __dirname + '/public/css/' // <-- additional slash after "css"
}));
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
});
Not sure if this is stylus version-related issue and wasn't/was present before but still it's quite confusing to me.

Answer 3

This has been driving me crazy for a few hours so I thought I'd share :)
I serve my external files from /public
So my stylesheets are in /public/styles. All I had to do was put my .styl files in a folder called /styles in the root of my project.
modules.app.use(modules.stylus.middleware({
debug: true,
src: __dirname + '/',
dest: __dirname + '/public/',
compile: compile
}));
I got around the whacky path requirements as I'm always going to ask for styles in /styles
GET /styles/website.css serves /styles/website.styl from the root / directory of the project

Answer 4

this worked for my
app.use(express.static('public'));
//stylus
function compile(str, path) {
return stylus(str)
.set('filename', path)
}
app.use(stylus.middleware(
{ src:'/public/css'
, compile: compile
}
));
put your file.styl in public.css it will be compiled there too!
the problem must be the src directory, it seems you are pointed to modules/stylus, anywhere I am not an exprert but this way works