Express Templates and Views Tutorial

Express templates and views allow you to generate HTML dynamically and render it in response to client requests.

This is useful for rendering HTML templates, such as web pages, that can contain dynamic data.

Create a basic server as we did in the previous tutorials.

What are Templates and Views?

1. Templates are HTML files with placeholders for dynamic content.
2. Views are instances of templates with actual data filled in those placeholders.

Using Template Engines

1. Express supports various template engines, such as EJS, Pug, and Handlebars.
2. Install a template engine and set it up in your Express app.

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
app.set('view engine', 'ejs'); // For EJS
    

Rendering Dynamic Views

1. Use res.render() to render views using a template engine.

app.get('/dynamic', (req, res) => {
    const data = { message: 'Hello, Express!' };
    res.render('myview', data); // myview is the template name
});
  

Passing Data to Views

1. You can pass data to views as an object.

app.get('/dynamic', (req, res) => {
    const data = { message: 'Hello, Express!' };
    res.render('myview', data);
});
  

Organizing Views

1. Keep your views organized in a dedicated folder.

views/
myview.ejs

app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));

Error Handling

1. Handle errors in route handlers, and use next(err) to pass them to error-handling middleware.

app.get('/error', (req, res, next) => {
    const error = new Error('This is an error');
    next(error);
});
  
  app.use((err, req, res, next) => {
    console.error(err.message);
    res.status(500).send('Internal Server Error');
});