Integrate #angular/cli with server-side EJS templates - node.js

Question

Goal: Modify Open Graph meta tags when web crawlers visit different routes.
I know Angular2 4.0.0 has a MetaService, and there is always jQuery, but web crawlers except Googlebot don't execute Javascript, so it is kind of useless to my purpose. While Angular Universal sounds like an overkill for changing a couple meta tags.
So far my solution is to copy and paste the compiled index.html in /dist to index.ejs, and modify the necessary fields. Is it possible to integrate the workflow with the angular-cli compilation process, by having the entry point changed from index.html to index.ejs? If not, what are the alternatives that I should explore?
In my index.ejs :
<meta property="og:url" content="<%= url %>" />
In my Express route index.js :
res.render('index', {
url: site_url,
});
In my server.js:
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, '/dist'));
app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
Please refrain your answer to the current #angular/cli version (v1.0.1 compatible).
Some related discussions:
Add customization options for HtmlWebpackPlugin #3338
Conditional template logic in index.html for beta.11-webpack #1544
Provide config to rename index.html in dist folder #2241

Answer 1

I was able to solve this by using Nunjucks to render templates served via Angular Universal. I'm sure it's possible to use other engines such as EJS as well. Here are the relevant portions of my server.ts:
import * as dotenv from 'dotenv';
dotenv.config();
import 'zone.js/dist/zone-node';
import 'reflect-metadata';
import * as nunjucks from 'nunjucks';
import { renderModuleFactory } from '#angular/platform-server';
import { enableProdMode } from '#angular/core';
import * as express from 'express';
import { join } from 'path';
import { readFileSync } from 'fs';
// Faster server renders w/ Prod mode (dev mode never needed)
enableProdMode();
// Express server
const app = express();
const PORT = process.env.PORT || 4201;
const DIST_FOLDER = join(process.cwd(), 'dist');
// Our index.html we'll use as our template
const template = readFileSync(join(DIST_FOLDER, 'index.html')).toString();
// * NOTE :: leave this as require() since this file is built Dynamically from webpack
const { AppServerModuleNgFactory, LAZY_MODULE_MAP } = require('./dist-server/main.bundle');
const { provideModuleMap } = require('#nguniversal/module-map-ngfactory-loader');
nunjucks.configure(DIST_FOLDER, {
autoescape: true,
express: app,
});
app.engine('html', (_, options, callback) => {
renderModuleFactory(AppServerModuleNgFactory, {
// Our index.html
document: template,
url: options.req.url,
// DI so that we can get lazy-loading to work differently (since we need it to just instantly render it)
extraProviders: [
provideModuleMap(LAZY_MODULE_MAP)
]
}).then(html => {
callback(null, html);
});
});
app.set('view engine', 'html');
// Server static files from dist folder
app.get('*.*', express.static(DIST_FOLDER));
// All regular routes use the Universal engine
// You can pass in server-side values here to have Nunjucks render them
app.get('*', (req, res) => {
res.render('index', { req, yourVar: 'some-value' });
});
// Start up the Node server
app.listen(PORT, () => {
console.log(`Node server listening on http://localhost:${PORT}`);
});