How do I use HTML as the view engine in Express?

147
votes

I tried this simple change from the seed and created the corresponding .html files (e.g. index.html).

//app.set('view engine', 'jade');
app.set('view engine', 'html');

and this file remained the same:

exports.index = function(req, res){
  res.render('index');
};

but while running I get

500 Error: Cannot find module 'html'

Is my only option to use 'ejs'? My intent was to use plain HTML in conjuction with AngularJS.

16
htmlnode.jsexpress
See this topic for an answer: stackoverflow.com/questions/4529586/… Hope this helps, – roland
app.engine('html', require('ejs').renderFile); – Dinesh Kanivu

16 Answers

103
votes

The answers at the other link will work, but to serve out HTML, there is no need to use a view engine at all, unless you want to set up funky routing. Instead, just use the static middleware:

app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
38
votes

To make the render engine accept html instead of jade you can follow the following steps;

  1. Install consolidate and swig to your directory.

     npm install consolidate
 npm install swig

  2. add following lines to your app.js file

    var cons = require('consolidate');

// view engine setup
app.engine('html', cons.swig)
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
app.set('view engine', 'html');

  3. add your view templates as .html inside “views” folder. Restart you node server and start the app in the browser.

Though this will render html without any issue, I would recommend you to use JADE by learning it. Jade is an amazing template engine and learning this will help you achieve better design & scalability.

28
votes

In your apps.js just add

// view engine setup
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
app.engine('html', require('ejs').renderFile);
app.set('view engine', 'html');

Now you can use ejs view engine while keeping your view files as .html

source: http://www.makebetterthings.com/node-js/how-to-use-html-with-express-node-js/

You need to install this two packages:

npm install ejs --save
npm install path --save

And then import needed packages:

var path = require('path');


This way you can save your views as .html instead of .ejs.
Pretty helpful while working with IDEs that support html but dont recognize ejs.

18
votes

try this for your server config

app.configure(function() {
    app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));         // set the static files location
    app.use(express.logger('dev'));                         // log every request to the console
    app.use(express.bodyParser());                          // pull information from html in POST
    app.use(express.methodOverride());                      // simulate DELETE and PUT
    app.use(express.favicon(__dirname + '/public/img/favicon.ico'));
});

then your callback functions to routes will look like:

function(req, res) {
    res.sendfile('./public/index.html');
};
18
votes

No view engine is necessary, if you want to use angular with simple plain html file. Here's how to do it: In your route.js file:

router.get('/', (req, res) => {
   res.sendFile('index.html', {
     root: 'yourPathToIndexDirectory'
   });
});
9
votes

I recommend using https://www.npmjs.com/package/express-es6-template-engine - extremely lightwave and blazingly fast template engine. The name is a bit misleading as it can work without expressjs too.

The basics required to integrate express-es6-template-engine in your app are pretty simple and quite straight forward to implement: 

const express = require('express'),
  es6Renderer = require('express-es6-template-engine'),
  app = express();
  
app.engine('html', es6Renderer);
app.set('views', 'views');
app.set('view engine', 'html');
 
app.get('/', function(req, res) {
  res.render('index', {locals: {title: 'Welcome!'}});
});
 
app.listen(3000);
index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
    <h1>${title}</h1>
</body>
</html>
5
votes

Comment out the middleware for html i.e.

//app.set('view engine', 'html');

Instead use:

app.get("/",(req,res)=>{
    res.sendFile("index.html");
});
4
votes

Answer is very Simple. You Must use app.engine('html') to render *.html Pages. try this.It must Solve the Problem.

app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
**// Set EJS View Engine**
app.set('view engine','ejs');
**// Set HTML engine**
app.engine('html', require('ejs').renderFile);

the .html file Will work

4
votes

Html files do not need to be rendered.
what a render engine does is turn a file that is not an Html file into an Html file.
to send an Html file, just do:

res.sendFile("index.html");

you might need to use __dirname+"/index.html" so express will know the exact path.

3
votes

HTML files can be rendered using ejs engine:

app.set('view engine', 'ejs');

And make sure your files under "/views" are named with ".ejs".

For example "index.ejs".

3
votes

html is not a view engine , but ejs offers the possibility to write html code within it

3
votes

Install ejs template

npm install ejs --save

Refer ejs in app.js

app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));`
app.set('view engine', 'ejs');

Create a ejs template in views like views/indes.ejs & use ejs tempalte in router

router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
    res.render('index', { title: 'Express' });
});
1
votes

to server html pages through routing, I have done this.

var hbs = require('express-hbs');
app.engine('hbs', hbs.express4({
  partialsDir: __dirname + '/views/partials'
}));
app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
app.set('view engine', 'hbs');

and renamed my .html files to .hbs files - handlebars support plain html

1
votes

To make the render engine accept html instead of jade you can follow the following steps;

Install consolidate and swig to your directory.

 npm install consolidate
 npm install swig

add following lines to your app.js file

var cons = require('consolidate');

// view engine setup
app.engine('html', cons.swig)
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
app.set('view engine', 'html');

add your view templates as .html inside “views” folder. Restart you node server and start the app in the browser.

This should work

1
votes

Try out this simple solution, it worked for me

app.get('/', function(req, res){
    res.render('index.html')
  });
0
votes

Render html template with the help of swig. 

//require module swig    
    var swig = require('swig');

// view engine setup    
    app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
    app.engine('html', swig.renderFile);
    app.set('view engine', 'html');