node ejs reference error data not defined at eval when handing data to view

Question

node ejs reference error data not defined at eval when handing data to view

i've been closing in on a node application using express and ejs, but when i try to hand data to my view from the controller like so

var myData = {
  theData: data
};
res.render(path.join(__dirname + '/../views/index'), myData);

i get a nice error

ReferenceError:.. myData is not defined eval (from ejs lib)

when trying to access myData in the view like so

var data = <%-myData%>;

or in any other way basically, i've tried stringifying the data, wrapping it in another object and stuff like that but it still just won't show up, i have the feeling i'm missing something really basic here, does anyone have an idea on how to fix this?

node.js
express
view
ejs
embedded-javascript

Answer 1

The second argument you pass to render() is an object containing the view variables you want to use in your template. So the error you are seeing makes sense. If you want to use myData in that way you'd have to do something like this in your controller/app:

res.render(..., { myData: JSON.stringify(myData) });