Angular directive templateUrl trying to GET from Express - angularjs

Question

I'm trying to get a third-party Angular directive (ngCart) to work with my Angular application. It seems like the ngcart directives are looking for a templateUrl as a relative path to the directive, and instead it seems like Express is trying to serve up the files instead of the directive finding the HTML file at the relative templateUrl path.
Project structure
projectName
| - bower_components/
| - node_modules/
| - public/
| - css
| - index.html
| - app.js (angular app)
| - src/
| - server.js (express app)
| - routes/
| - models/
| - package.json
server.js
...
app.use("/", express.static("public"));
app.use('/bower_components', express.static(__dirname + '/../bower_components'));
app.listen(8000, function () {
console.log("App is listening");
});
third-party directive file causing issues:
templateUrl: function(element, attrs) {
if (typeof attrs.templateUrl == 'undefined') {
return 'template/ngCart/addtocart.html'; // This is the relative path that's freaking out
} else {
return attrs.templateUrl;
}
}
The console error I'm getting is:
GET http://localhost:8000/template/ngCart/addtocart.html 404 (Not Found)
It seems like express is trying to serve up the HTML file in the template folder inside the third-party directive, but I just want it to be a relative path to the HTML file without express being involved.

Answer 1

As pointed out by #Claies in the comments, someone brought this concern up with the creator of ngCart (thread found here), to which he responded saying that you basically are supposed to copy the template files into a folder called "template" in your main public directory. It isn't documented anywhere in the ngCart documentation though, so hopefully this can help someone in the future.
It appears this is the most common way to bring in third-party angular directives that have their own template files.

Answer 2

Update:
I'm no expert in AngularJS, I've been fighting this exact issue with a programming buddy all afternoon.
Eventually we tripped across another question on SO which describes a vastly more elegant solution.
(I've also commented on the GitHub issue tracking page, for future reference.)
In short:
<ngcart-summary template-url="/libraries/ngCart/template/ngCart/summary.html"></ngcart-summary>