Render jade template from middleware in node.js with express - node.js

Question

Instead of checking in every controller I want to use app.all('*') to check if the user is authenticated and it already works quite well. If the user is logged in I'm just calling next() and if he's not I'm calling another route to display the login page.
So far so good, but it seems that rendering from that middleware callback function somehow messes up my paths, for example the stylesheet doesn't work and when I click on it in the page source I again land on the index page.
To sum it up, this works and displays my styles:
app.get('/', function (req, res) {
res.render('index', { title: 'Account Page' });
});
while this does work partially, it only displayes the HTML without the styles from the stylesheet:
app.all('*', function (req, res) {
app.set('loggedIn', controller.security.authenticationAction(req));
if (app.get('loggedIn')) next(); // go on with '/' route
else res.render('index', { title: 'Index Page' });
});
This also displays the same HTML page (with another title though) just without the styles.
This is my default config in the app.js:
app.all('*', function (req, res) { ... });
// all environments
app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 3000);
app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
app.set('view engine', 'jade');
app.use(express.favicon());
app.use(express.logger('dev'));
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.methodOverride());
app.use(app.router);
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
app.use(express.cookieParser('keykeykey'));
Help!

Answer 1

Your stylesheets are (probably) served by express.static, which is declared after your app.all() route (with Express, whenever you first declare a route, the router middleware is inserted into the middleware chain there-and-then; in fact, using app.use(app.router) is useless most of the time, because Express has already inserted it behind the scenes).
Because requests are processed by middleware in order of their declaration, your app.all gets to handle the requests for static resources as well. Try moving the static middleware to before your app.all:
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
app.all('*', function (req, res) { ... });
By the way, express.favicon() would probably give similar issues, and if you want to use any of the services provided by express.bodyParser or express.cookieParser etc., the same applies again).