I've been used to PHP, where code is put in a file, and executed each time on load.
With NodeJS, I need to use HTML files, but need calculation done within the files. A solution would be putting the whole file's HTML content into the file that is running the HTTP server, but I'd like to have them in files instead.
I am using NodeJS, and Express. How is this done?
If you are using express and want to render HTML files you should use ejs as your template engine. Here is how you do it from scratch:
start a new project with express -e
tell express to use ejs for rendering HTML files:
app.configure(function(){
// ...
app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
// app.set('view engine', 'ejs');
app.engine('html', require('ejs').renderFile);
// ...
});
create a route:
app.get("/", function(req, res) {
res.render("your.html", {
title: "This is plain HTML rendered with ejs"
})
})
and finally your your.html file in the views folder
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title><%= title %></title>
</head>
<body>
<h1><%= title %></h1>
<p>Welcome to <%= title %></p>
</body>
</html>
It sounds like you want to use templates, here is an example: