NodeJS Redirecting WIth Single-Page JQuery Mobile - node.js

Question

I'm working on a NodeJS/ExpressJS application using JQuery Mobile (JQM). I'm having trouble redirecting from the backend. My app dynamically generates buttons
<button class=\"setAttndingbtn btn btn-primary\" value=\"" + curr.place_id + "\">Attending: " + numAttending.numAttnd + " people are going</button>
after a $.getJSON search is made. Using promises/setTimeout, the following handler is attached to all buttons:
$('.setAttndingbtn').click(function(){
var buttonsir = $(this); //Store this button reference
if($(this).html().slice(0,1) == 'A'){ //Check the button's state
$.getJSON('/api/attending/' + $(this).val(), function(data){ //Ajax
$(buttonsir).text("You are attending! " + data.numAttnd + " people are going"); //Change state
});
} else {
$.getJSON('/api/attending/rmv/' + $(this).val(), function(data){
$(buttonsir).text("Attending: " + data.numAttnd + " people are going");
});
}
});
The relevant routes are here:
function isLoggedIn(req, res, next){
if(req.isAuthenticated()){
return next();
} else {
res.redirect('/login');
}
}
app.route('/login')
.get(function(req, res){
res.sendFile(p + "/public/login.html");
});
app.route('/api/attending/:number')
.get(isLoggedIn, searchServerInstance.setAttending);
On the backend, when an "Attending" button is clicked, I want to check if the user is logged in and if not, redirect them to the login page. When I run the code as is, in Firefox's Firebug console, I see the GET request and if I expand it, in the "Response" section, the HTML code to my login page is displayed. But the page doesn't actually load the file.
My /login.html has <div data-role="page">, header, and content tags, as JQM recommends. I've tried including the entire login page in my /index.html, but attempting to use res.redirect("/public/index.html#page2") results in a "file not found".
Is it possible to use Node/Express to tell JQM which <div data-role="page" id="page1"> to load? Is there a way to force JQM to load /login.html from the server-side, the way rel="external" allows for? Or will I have to ditch JQM?

Answer 1

Reading through the JQM documentation, I've figured out some ways to do this. For anyone else who encounters it, here's what I believe I understand:
If you don't care about maintaining the integrity of the single-page, you can look into turning off JQM's defaults, like ajaxEnabled, which turns off JQM's hash listening and ajax, loading URLs normally. I don't know if this works with Express's res.redirect because I haven't tried it.
What I opted to do was to replace res.redirect('/login.html') with a custom JSON response res.send({loginState: "LOGIN"}). Then, on the client side, within my $.getJSON request in the $('.setAttndngbtn') listener, i put the following code:
.
if(data.loginstate !== "LOGIN"){
$(buttonsir).text("You are attending! " + data.numAttnd + " people are going");
} else {
$(":mobile-pagecontainer").pagecontainer("change", '#page2');
}
And it works just fine! Here is the JQM documentation on the pagecontainer widget that allows in-page redirection with the change method or external redirection with the load method.