How to change default layout in express using handlebars?

Question

I am using Express 4.9.0 and express-generator.

Created boilerplate with a following command:

express --hbs projectname

Builtin han

Answer 1

From the handlebars readme:

There are two ways to set a default layout: configuring the view engine's defaultLayout property, or setting Express locals app.locals.layout.

The layout into which a view should be rendered can be overridden per-request by assigning a different value to the layout request local. The following will render the "home" view with no layout:

app.get('/', function (req, res, next) {
   res.render('home', {layout: false});
});

In case you want to set the default layout just for a specific subroute, you might wanna use the following in the top section of your route:

router.all('/*', function (req, res, next) {
    req.app.locals.layout = 'admin'; // set your layout here
    next(); // pass control to the next handler
    });

You can also set the default layout on initialization:

// Create `ExpressHandlebars` instance with a default layout.
var hbs = exphbs.create({
    defaultLayout: 'main',
    helpers      : helpers,

    // Uses multiple partials dirs, templates in "shared/templates/" are shared
    // with the client-side of the app (see below).
    partialsDir: [
        'shared/templates/',
        'views/partials/'
        ]
    });

// Register `hbs` as our view engine using its bound `engine()` function.
app.engine('handlebars', hbs.engine);
app.set('view engine', 'handlebars');