Error 404 when serving files in angularjs and node app - angularjs

Question

I have
<base href="/!#/">
at the top of my index.html file. When I go to URL http://localhost:5000/ everything works fine, it instantly add #!/ so the URL is http://localhost:5000/#!/ and page display as expected.
At the server side I have following code which should allow me to use my files
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
Structure of my files is something like:
bookApp(folder)
server.js
public(folder)
index.html
app.js(ngRoute)
views(folder)
css(folder)
controllers(folder)
and my AngularJS routing is:
(function () {
'use strict';
angular
.module('app', [
'ngRoute'
])
.config(config);
function config ($routeProvider) {
$routeProvider
.when('/', {
controller: 'PostsCtrl',
templateUrl: 'views/posts.html'
})
.when('/register', {
controller: 'registerCtrl',
templateUrl: 'views/register.html'
})
.when('/login', {
controller: 'loginCtrl',
templateUrl: 'views/login.html'
})
.otherwise('/');
}
})();
The very first page (views/posts.html) load as expected but when I click
<li>Sign in</li>
the URL is http://localhost:5000/login not as like I thought http://localhost:5000/!#/login.
and it display:
Cannot GET /login
when I manually change URL to http://localhost:5000/#!/login it works fine.
How to fix this behavior?
The only solution I see is to get rid of <base> tag and in every link manually in href directive add !# before slash.

Answer 1

It looks like you are forgetting the ng-view directive: <div ng-view></div> which is the container for the content that is provided by your routing. Place this above your script if you have everything contained in one file.
You can also try:
<ng-view></ng-view>
<div class="ng-view"></div>
Is there any particular reason you are still using Angular 1? I know this isn't technically answering your question, but I would highly recommend that you start using the latest Angular. You can still keep legacy code but it will make a lot of what you are doing a lot cleaner and clear.