Using hbs and getting error of "Arguments to path.join must be strings"?

Question

Using hbs and getting error of "Arguments to path.join must be strings"?

I want to apply some templates to JSON data (eventually will be getting the data from a url) using hbs and express. As a newbie using express 4, I found a lot of previous posts and solution really confusing as some functions are depreciated in express 4. I combined some snippets of codes and got a result like this:

  var engines = require('consolidate');
  var express = require('express');
  var hbs = require('hbs');
  app = express();


    app.set('views', __dirname+ '/views');
    app.set('view engine', 'hbs');
    app.set("view options", { layout: true });


  // ROUTES
      app.get('/', function (req, res){ 
    var data = {"employees":[
      {"firstName":"John", "lastName":"Doe"}, 
      {"firstName":"Anna", "lastName":"Smith"},
      {"firstName":"Peter", "lastName":"Jones"}
  ]}


          res.render('index', JSON.stringify(data));
      }); 

      app.listen(3000);

I have also tried just putting a simple string in res.render, such as

         res.render('index', 'haha');

But it still doesn't work. Any insights please..?

EDITED: The directory of my template is

        views
            - index.hbs

and I actually only put

         <hi> Hi </h1>

in this file.

javascript
json
node.js
express
handlebars

Answer 1

The second parameter of render is an object, not a string. Just pass data.

Edit: You're also setting layout: true but you don't have a layout.hbs. Set it to false and your index.hbs should render.

Edit2: Full working example

index.js

var engines = require('consolidate');
var express = require('express');
var hbs = require('hbs');
app = express();


app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
app.set('view engine', 'hbs');
app.set("view options", { layout: false });


// ROUTES
app.get('/', function (req, res){
    var data = {
        "employees":[
            {"firstName":"John", "lastName":"Doe"},
            {"firstName":"Anna", "lastName":"Smith"},
            {"firstName":"Peter", "lastName":"Jones"}
        ]
    };

    res.render('index', data);
});

app.listen(3000);

views/index.hbs

{{#each employees}}
    Name: {{firstName}}<br>
{{/each}}