Personal Catalogue: React, Express & MongoDB — Chapter 9, Exercise 2
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TASK
Build the frontend (npm run build), wire express.static into
server.js, and confirm the whole app is reachable and fully functional
at http://localhost:4000/ alone, with no separate Vite dev server
running, and with a real API call succeeding via a relative path.

SOLUTION

  cd catalogue-web
  npm run build
  cd ..

Output: a real catalogue-web/dist/ folder appears, containing
index.html plus hashed .js and .css files.

server.js addition:

  const path = require('path');
  app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, '../catalogue-web/dist')));

Stop the Vite dev server entirely (Ctrl+C in its terminal, so nothing
is listening on its usual port at all), then start only the backend:

  cd catalogue-api
  node server.js

Visit http://localhost:4000/ in a browser.

Observed: the real catalogue UI loads -- the same list, search bar, tag
filter, and add-item form built across Chapters 4-7 -- served entirely
by the one Express process, with no second dev server running
anywhere. Opening the browser's Network tab and adding a new item
confirms the POST request goes to the relative path /api/items (no
protocol or host prefix visible in the request, since API_BASE_URL
resolved to an empty string in this production build), and it
succeeds, returning the newly created item and updating the visible
list.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
----------------------------
It performs a real production build and wires up static serving exactly
as the chapter describes, then proves the unified single-process
deployment genuinely works end to end -- not just that the page loads,
but that a real write request succeeds via a relative path with no
separate frontend server involved at all.