Hi is there a 'express' specific way to make some global app data available to all my routes?
Or is it a case of just using an module.exports statement?
Any pointers more than welcome.
Node noob - btw
You can set a global object that is also available in your layout
app.js
app.configure(function(){
app.set('view options', {pageTitle: ''});
});
app.get('/',function(request, response){
response.app.settings['view options'].pageTitle = 'Hello World';
response.render('home');
});
layout.jade
!!!
html
head
title= pageTitle
body!= body
You can use app.set() in the setup portion of your app to make it available to each request. The app object is available via req.app in your routes.
Personally, I like to do an app.set('name', obj); in the setup and in the routes I access it via req.app.settings.name.
You could also use a dynamic helper to pass data to all views.
app.js
// Dynamic Helpers
app.dynamicHelpers({
appSettings: function(req, res){
return {name:"My App", version:"0.1"};
}
});
Now on your views you can use it like this (I used ejs on this example but it should work with jade or any other view engine):
view.ejs
<%= appSettings.name %>
<%= appSettings.version %>
Hope this helps.
Related
I used NodeJs with Handlebars and thought about switching to PugJs because some functionality is native - using Handlebars requires some helper functions / partials.
In Handlebars I have to define a layout and pass in the template. In PugJs I created two example routes
First route file:
const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.render('index', {
title: 'Home',
template: 'main'
});
});
module.exports = router;
Second route file:
const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.render('index', {
title: 'Page2',
template: 'pageTwo'
});
});
module.exports = router;
As you can see I always have to render my index file and pass in the desired pug file as a template variable.
index.pug
doctype html
html
include ./header.pug
body
include ./templates/#{template}.pug
header.pug
head
title #{title} template!
main.pug
script(src='./client/main.js')
h1 main content here
pageTwo.pug
p pageTwo
When rendering the pug files I get this error
ENOENT: no such file or directory, open
'...\views\templates\#{template}.pug'
How can I replace #{template} with the correct template variable?
Dynamic template selection isn't a feature of pug, I believe it has something to do with how pug pre-compiles everything into a JavaScript function that stays in-memory inside node.js when it runs. The benefit of that is super-fast page rendering, so we're happy to keep using pug and just work around this.
Speaking of which, you can accomplish what you want to do using conditional logic:
doctype html
html
include ./header.pug
body
if template === 'pageOne'
include ./templates/pageOne.pug
else if template === 'pageTwo'
include ./templates/pageTwo.pug
else
include ./templates/home.pug
You should also look into the extends feature to simplify adding the header into your templates and mixins to resuse code between templates. You might find that these features could provide a better solution to your requirements with some redesign.
I'm using Handlebars in my NodeJS application as my templating engine.
I've put all my templates in a views folder like so :
-
- /controllers
- /views
- index.html
- server.js
Here's my code to render the template when the user access a given URL (using express for routing) :
app.get("/", function(req, res){
var template = handlebars.compile("views/index.html");
var data = {"name": "Charles"};
var result = template(data);
res.send(result);
});
I'm trying to render a template from a file, but it's not working. This is what the browser outputs directly when I'm accessing the / URL :
views/index.html
That makes sense, since it's interpreting the given param as a string directly and not as a path to an external template.
How can I load my template file (in this case the one in views/index.html to a variable, so that I can then render the template?
The only examples I found were storing all the templates in a file and loading them via AJAX, but all these examples were from "front-end" handlebars and not when using it with Node.
Is it possible to achieve what I want? I looked at the documentation but it's hard to find good infos for handlebars with NodeJS.
From your description, it sounds like you want handlebars as view engine, with dynamic views. You don't need to do this manually, here is an example (using express-handlebars):
var handlebars = require('express-handlebars');
app.engine('.html', handlebars({layout: false, extname: '.html'}));
app.set('view engine', '.html');
app.get("/:view", function(req, res){
var view = req.params.view;
res.render(view, { "name": "Charles" }); // Whatever data you want
});
With handlebars you have to load the file yourself or you can precompile the files (using grunt/gulp maybe) I feel way more confortable with swig ( http://paularmstrong.github.io/swig/ )
It is very simple to use. And it has also integration with express if you want.
var swig = require('swig');
swig.renderFile('/path/to/template.html', {
pagename: 'awesome people',
authors: ['Paul', 'Jim', 'Jane']
});
In your case
app.get("/", function(req, res){
res.send(swig.renderFile('views/index.html', {"name": "Charles"}));
});
This is a bit of a specific question, but I'm at a bit of a loss for an answer.
First, a little background. I've been trying to learn angular, and I wanted to start using Node as the backend. I currently have a working tutorial app that I can run locally that just returns data that is hard coded into the main controller.
When I moved the files to my NodeJS server, it stopped working though. Here is what works:
The files load correctly - there are no console errors, and I can view each of the files in the source (index.html, app.js, maincontroller.js)
The scope exists, and the variables are defined. I put a console.log($scope) inside the mainController.js file, and I can see all of the variables defined correctly.
Non-angular javascript works - I can place alerts outside/inside the mainController, and they all work correctly (also, console.log obviously works)
I am serving the files via a simple Node.js server. I am using express and hbs. I was originally using compression, and 0 cache length, but have since removed those with no change in the result.
The specific issue I'm having is that none of the template variables update. I've simplified it down to the following code for testing. When viewed locally, the page says 'I now understand how the scope works!', when served from Cloud 9, the structure exists, but the {{understand}} variable in the template doesn't work.
index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<title>Learning AngularJS</title>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.7/angular.min.js"></script>
<script src="js/app.js"></script>
<script src="js/maincontroller.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="content" ng-app="MyTutorialApp" ng-controller="MainController">
{{understand}}
</div>
</body>
app.js
var app = angular.module('MyTutorialApp',[]);
maincontroller.js
app.controller("MainController", function($scope){
$scope.understand = "I now understand how the scope works!";
});
server.js (Node server on Cloud 9)
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var hbs = require('hbs');
app.set('view engine','html');
app.engine('html',hbs.__express);
app.configure(function() {
app.set('views', __dirname);
});
//app.use(express.compress());
app.use('/js',express.static(__dirname + '/client/js'));
app.use('/css',express.static(__dirname + '/client/css'));
app.use('/img',express.static(__dirname + '/client/img'));
//router
app.get('/',function(req,res){
res.render('client/index.html');
return;
});
//404 responses
app.use(function(req, res, next){
res.status(404);
// respond with html page
if (req.accepts('html')) {
res.render('client/404.html', { url: req.url });
return;
}
// respond with json
if (req.accepts('json')) {
res.send({ error: 'Not found' });
return;
}
// default to plain-text. send()
res.type('txt').send('Not found');
});
app.listen(process.env.PORT);
console.log('listening on port '+process.env.PORT);
everythin became clear when i read
"Handlebars.js is an extension to the Mustache templating language"
what this menas is that hbs uses {{}} as delimiters as well as angular so the {{understand}} in your html never gets to angular because is first parsed and substituted by hbs. if you want to use hbs with angular youll need to change your delimiters using your angulars $interpolateProvider in your app configuration something like
$interpolateProvider.startSymbol('{/{');
$interpolateProvider.endSymbol('}/}');
You can use \{{understand}} as this will counter your hbs and put your angular on top.
I'd like to set my CSS path in my express application in order to use this one in my jade layouts. However, I don't know how to do, I try to use "app.set('cssPath', __dirname+'/public/admin/css/')" but it doesn't work because I can not use "app.get()" in my external controllers.
My layout _layout.jade :
!!! 5
html(lang='fr')
head
meta(charset='UTF-8')
link(href='admin/css/screen.css', media='screen, projection', rel='stylesheet', type='text/css')
body
.container
h1 Wellcome to Forest Administrator
.space20
block content
.clear.space20
script(type='text/javascript', src='admin/js/jquery.js')
My page edit.jade :
extends ../_layout
block content
.block.half.first
h2 Add a post
And I'd like to use something like :
link(href='+myCssPath+', media='screen, projection', rel='stylesheet', type='text/css')
Not sure if I get what you want to do but You can use
res.locals.cssPath = 'string with the path';
And cssPath will be available in your template.
Besides that you don't need __dirname+'/public/. Part because when the page is rendered for the browser /public/ will be /
[edit] If you want to have that variable available in all you routes, but declaring it just once, you can create a small middleware like
var express = require('express');
var app = express();
var app.configure(function(){
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.methodOverride());
// .. and your other tipical configuration
//this small middleware for variables that must available in all paths
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
res.locals.cssPath = 'path to the css directory';
next();
});
});
//From here your typical route declarations
app.get('/', function(req, res) { res.render('someView'); });
I would like to use Jade block inheritance but I'm not sure how to do that if I'm not using Express. According to the Jade doc, I can use block inheritance in Express by simply adding app.set('view options', { layout: false });. How can I achieve this without Express?
https://github.com/visionmedia/jade
You don't need Express at all to use Jade's Template inheritance; you only need Jade:
// app.js
var jade = require('jade');
var options = { pretty: true, locals: {} };
jade.renderFile(__dirname + '/home.jade', options, function (err, html) {
console.log(html);
});
// home.jade
extends core
block body
h1 Home
// core.jade
doctype html
html
head
meta(charset='utf-8')
title Foo
body
block body
Another example can be found in the repository:
examples/extend.js
examples/extend.jade
examples/extend-layout.jade.
The reason the Jade docs mention setting the 'view options' for Express 2.x is because Express' own (and now defunct in 3.x) layouts are a competing feature that should be disabled to prevent conflicts when using Jade's inheritance.