title: How to serve static files in AppEngine Standard and nodejs
body: <p>The <a href="https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/nodejs/serving-static-files" rel="nofollow noreferrer">documentation</a> says that you simply must update your app.yaml - like you would for any language within AppEngine. It also states later on that for local development, you probably want your server to respond to static requests as well. However, when I update my very simple app.yaml to be as such:</p>
  
  <pre><code>runtime: nodejs8
  
  handlers:
    - url: /apiEndPoint
      script: auto
  
    - url: /.*
      static_dir: public
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It seems all requests still end up coming in to my script - which will return a 404 in the prod instance, since those files won't be uploaded. I can force them to be uploaded, and then my nodejs server responds to the static requests - but I thought the idea of this app.yaml was to configure it so static files are served outside of my app logic?</p>