I am a beginner in express and node, coming from a PHP background. What I used to do in PHP, split a file into header.php, footer.php, sidebar.php etc.
And finally, include them in a index.php or other pages. Is there any way I can do it using express. I am using node and express to serve a HTML file.
All I want is to split them into header.html, footer.html etc and add them in index.html or other pages. Currently, I can serve only a single HTML file using express and node. Any help would be appreciated.
You just have to pick a template engine to do something like that. Here is a list that you can pick:
hogan
jade
handlebars.js
This is quite easier than you think.
Follow the link :
http://expressjs.com/en/guide/using-template-engines.html
The templating engine used there is Pug(upgraded version of jade). You may also choose to use any other one too like that Handlebars, EJS etc.
Related
I have an .html file and a corresponding .js file (using Bootstrap) I need to deploy this to Heroku.
I'm really trying to avoid having to rework this entire project, I need more than just bootstrap styling. This project pulls data through an API, and populates based on the data pulled. Input is also needed from user to update the backend through API...
I've tried to find examples of how to accomplish just pulling in html/js into nodeJS/expressJS... but it seems most examples are just to use Bootstrap.css for styling, or there's no actual UI interaction coded in the example.
Any links or input will be greatly appreciated.
If you want to render a html file prepared in the server side. You need a view engine like ejs or pug. You can pass data into the html page. Another way of doing the same thing is a framework called NextJs or NuxtJs but you need to know React or Vue.
You can add bootstrap.css into the public folder and express.static will handle the problem. Or you can use CDN links too.
Then you can add the url of bootstrap.css into the html head.
https://expressjs.com/en/guide/using-template-engines.html
https://expressjs.com/en/starter/static-files.html
Can anyone please explain what is Ejs , can we build a full fledge frontend using Ejs while using node.?
I have been searching for it but i can not find the answer i want.?And please someone differentiate between the frontend frameworks like (angular and react) and Ejs..
EJS is a template system. You define HTML pages in the EJS syntax and you specify where various data will go in the page. Then, your app combines data with the template and "renders" a complete HTML page where EJS takes your data and inserts it into the web page according to how you've defined the template. For example, you could have a table of dynamic data from a database and you want EJS to generate the table of data according to your display rules. It saves you from the drudgery of writing code to dynamically generate HTML based on data.
EJS is compatible with Express for back-end use as it hooks into the View engine architecture that Express provides and lets you render web pages to the client with res.render() in Express.
FYI, there are dozens of competing template systems for use in node.js. EJS is a popular one and people typically choose one based on features that match your needs, how their layout language fits what you want to use, what seems easiest to you to use, etc... I've used Pug, Handlebars, Nunjucks and EJS. Nunjucks is my current favorite.
EJS (along with all the other competing template engines) allows you to generate full-blown HTML pages which certainly enables a "proper front-end".
EJS is a tool for generating web pages that can include dynamic data and can share templated pieces with other web pages (such as common headers/footers). It is not a front-end framework. While EJS can be used by client-side Javascript to generate HTML on the client-side, it is more typically used by your back-end to generate web pages in response to some URL request. EJS is not a client-side framework like Angular or React and does not dictate what client-side framework you do or don't use (if any). It is mostly covers a separate solution space.
I'm quite new to node.js, having migrated from php... So in php you can create say a file called headcode.php and you can put tour navbar there and anything else that needs to be at the beginning or in the head of all your pages, then you can go ahead and include it in all pages on your site.
My question is, how do we do this in node.js? I tried fs.readFile but it only showed html with no css
And i noticed i can't type node.js in an html file, neither can i type html in a .js file without doing res.write for each line of html which is rather tedious.
How can i implement this php ideology of "headcode.php" into node.js?
I reccomend using the express framework (expressjs.com). There are a lot of good and free tutorials on how to use it. And with the use of a Templating Engine like EJS, Handlebars or PUG you can use partitials and even a base Layout (Exception EJS, you need another npm module for this (express-ejs-layouts)
Here are the Docs on howto install the Templateengine of your choice using express. (expressjs.com/en/guide/using-template-engines.html)
I am new to node.js and at the moment I am trying to wrap my head around template engines. It seems like all the tutorials I find on using Angular.js with Node.js are always accompanied with Express.js.
Do I need Express.js to use Angular.js with Node.js? If so, why?
What is the relationship between Express and Node/Angular?
What in the world is a template engine?
Why did I not need a template engine for PHP?
You don't need to use Express for Angular. You could use another framework or just the plain node.js core http/https server directly. Express just incorporates abstractions and conventions on top of the built-in node.js http/https server to make it easier to write your backend logic.
See wikipedia for both a good overview of what a template engine is and a list of example template engines.
Template engines aren't necessary to generate output, but they can certainly aid you in that process by making it easier/simpler to compose output, instead of manually concatenating or echoing a bunch of strings for example. PHP kind of has a "template" built-in, in that output buffering is used such that you can just inject <?php ?> blocks anywhere in the output. This is similar to many template engines, including ejs, except ejs can save the template as a reusable function instead of throwing it all away once the request is done).
Suppose I have a large HTML-file, and at a few places I want to insert a string, which content is set during startup. How would I solve this if I'm only allowed to deliver a static HTML, hence everything has to be handled on the server-side.
You can use JADE templating engine. If it will be static all the time, you can compile the templates to your public directory and serve them with a framework like ExpressJS
If you already have this HTML file, I would suggest use of EJS.
Rewriting anything to haml (jade) is just too much work...