How to redirect 404 errors to a page in ExpressJS?

I think you should first define all your routes and as the last route add

//The 404 Route (ALWAYS Keep this as the last route)
app.get('*', function(req, res){
  res.status(404).send('what???');
});

An example app which does work:

app.js:

var express = require('express'),
    app = express.createServer();

app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));

app.get('/', function(req, res){
  res.send('hello world');
});

//The 404 Route (ALWAYS Keep this as the last route)
app.get('*', function(req, res){
  res.send('what???', 404);
});

app.listen(3000, '127.0.0.1');

---

alfred@alfred-laptop:~/node/stackoverflow/6528876$ mkdir public
alfred@alfred-laptop:~/node/stackoverflow/6528876$ find .
alfred@alfred-laptop:~/node/stackoverflow/6528876$ echo "I don't find a function for that... Anyone knows?" > public/README.txt
alfred@alfred-laptop:~/node/stackoverflow/6528876$ cat public/README.txt 

.
./app.js
./public
./public/README.txt

alfred@alfred-laptop:~/node/stackoverflow/6528876$ curl http://localhost:3000/
hello world
alfred@alfred-laptop:~/node/stackoverflow/6528876$ curl http://localhost:3000/README.txt
I don't find a function for that... Anyone knows?

I found this example quite helpful:

https://github.com/visionmedia/express/blob/master/examples/error-pages/index.js

So, it is actually this part:

// "app.router" positions our routes
// above the middleware defined below,
// this means that Express will attempt
// to match & call routes _before_ continuing
// on, at which point we assume it's a 404 because
// no route has handled the request.

app.use(app.router);

// Since this is the last non-error-handling
// middleware use()d, we assume 404, as nothing else
// responded.

// $ curl http://localhost:3000/notfound
// $ curl http://localhost:3000/notfound -H "Accept: application/json"
// $ curl http://localhost:3000/notfound -H "Accept: text/plain"

app.use(function(req, res, next) {
  res.status(404);

  // respond with html page
  if (req.accepts('html')) {
    res.render('404', { url: req.url });
    return;
  }

  // respond with json
  if (req.accepts('json')) {
    res.json({ error: 'Not found' });
    return;
  }

  // default to plain-text. send()
  res.type('txt').send('Not found');
});

You can put a middleware at the last position that throws a NotFound error,
or even renders the 404 page directly:

app.use(function(req,res){
    res.status(404).render('404.jade');
});