Templating Engine

Novaxjs2 includes a powerful templating engine with conditionals, loops, and variable interpolation.

Setting Up Views


// Configure view engine
app.setViewEngine('novax', {
  viewsPath: './views' // optional, defaults to './views'
});

Basic Template

Create a file views/home.html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>{{ title }}</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>{{ heading }}</h1>

  {{#if user}}
    <p>Welcome back, {{ user.name }}!</p>
  {{#else}}
    <p>Please log in</p>
  {{/if}}

  {{#each items}}
    <div class="item">
      <h3>{{ name }}</h3>
      <p>Price: ${{ price }}</p>
    </div>
  {{/each}}
</body>
</html>

Rendering Templates


app.get('/', async (req, res) => {
  const data = {
    title: 'Home Page',
    heading: 'Welcome to our site',
    user: { name: 'John Doe' },
    items: [
      { name: 'Product 1', price: 19.99 },
      { name: 'Product 2', price: 29.99 }
    ]
  };

  return await app.render('home', data);
});

Template Features

Feature Syntax Description
Variables {{ variable }} Output variable value
Conditionals {{#if condition}}...{{/if}} Conditional rendering
Else / Else If {{#else}}...{{/else}}
{{#elif condition}}...{{/elif}}		 Else clause for conditionals
Loops {{#each array}}...{{/each}} Iterate over arrays
Nested {{#each}}{{#if}}...{{/if}}{{/each}} Nested conditionals and loops