Serving Static Files in Hono with Bun After Moving public Folder

[xf6i]

I’m working on a Hono project using Bun, and my current file structure is:

.
├── public
│   ├── assets
│   │   └── imgs
│   │       └── logo.png
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── scripts
│   │   └── script.js
│   └── views
│       ├── 404.html
│       ├── add-items.html
│       ├── auth.html
│       ├── profile.html
│       └── wordrobe.html
├── src
│   ├── app.ts
│   ├── controllers
│   │   ├── itemController.ts
│   │   └── userController.ts
│   ├── middleware
│   │   └── jwtMiddleware.ts
│   ├── models
│   │   ├── db.ts
│   │   ├── itemModel.ts
│   │   └── userModel.ts
│   ├── routes
│   │   ├── itemRoute.ts
│   │   └── userRoute.ts
│   ├── server.ts
│   └── utils
│       ├── crypto.ts
│       ├── hash.ts
│       └── weakPasswordsList.ts

Since I moved the public folder outside src, I want to ensure my Hono app (running with Bun) can still serve static files from it properly.

My Questions:
How can I configure Hono with Bun to serve static files from public while keeping my routes functional?
Do I need to adjust the serveStatic middleware in Hono or change how Bun handles file serving?
What’s the recommended way to handle this in a Bun + Hono setup?

[kokoc30]

Yes—public can stay alongside src. The important detail is that a relative serveStatic root is resolved from the process working directory, not from the directory containing app.ts.

For Hono 4, start Bun from your project root and use:

// src/app.ts
import { Hono } from "hono"
import { serveStatic } from "hono/bun"

const app = new Hono()

// Keep your existing middleware and app.route(...) registrations here,
// before the static fallback.
app.get("/api/health", (c) => c.json({ ok: true }))

app.get("*", serveStatic({ root: "./public" }))

export default app

Keep your existing server.ts startup. Run it from the directory containing both public and src, for example:

bun run src/server.ts

With that root, the URL-to-file mapping is:

Request	File
/	public/index.html
/assets/imgs/logo.png	public/assets/imgs/logo.png
/scripts/script.js	public/scripts/script.js
/views/auth.html	public/views/auth.html

The URL does not include /public. You do not need rewriteRequestPath for this mapping. If you instead run Bun after changing into src, ./public points to src/public; either keep the project-root working directory or change the configured root accordingly.

Registering the static handler after your application routes lets those routes handle matching requests first. A missing static file falls through to your normal not-found handling; merely having public/views/404.html does not automatically make it the 404 response.

Version note: the current Bun guide uses serveStatic from @hono/bun. The hono/bun import above is for the Hono 4 adapter used around the time of this question; use the adapter matching your installed major version. The Hono 4 Bun adapter and static middleware show the file lookup and fall-through behavior.

Everything under this static root is publicly servable; keep files requiring authorization outside it or protect all requests handled by the static middleware. I checked the documentation and source, but have not run your application.