Accessing Express.js req or session from Jade template

Question

I am wondering if there is an easy way to access Express.js\' req or session variables from within a Jade template without passing it in through the normal response.

Answer 1

While there is always a way in javascript to escape the scope and crawl upwards, I really really really really really strongly encourage you to find another way.

Consider what you're asking: Can I have my view know about the guts of my controller?

Or what you're really asking: Can I have my view know about the guts of my runtime?

A view is supposed to take data and transform it into markup. That's IT. If you do anything else, you're doing it wrong. I don't care how "easy" it is. That's the point of an interface. To define exactly what is being passed, and to make it easy to replace one thing with another thing.

Answer 2

You'll need to create a dynamicHelper for Express to use.

app.dynamicHelpers({
    session: function (req, res) {
        return req.session;
    }
});

Then inside your template, you can use <%= session.logged_in %> or whatever.

Note: dynamicHelpers are deprecated in Express 3

Answer 3

You could solve this with a render function in which you use to render every view that needs the session variable as a local variable accessible in the template(usually when a user is logged in for example).

Here is an example of a function but you can adjust as you like:

var renderView = function(res, template, context, session, cb) {
    context.session = session;

    if(cb){
        res.render(template, context, function(error, html){
            cb(error, html)
        }
    } else {
        res.render(template, context)
    }
}

Then it can be used like this:

app.get("/url", function(req, res){

    req.session.user_email = user_email;

    renderView(res, "template_name", { local_variables: local_variables }, req.session)
});

and in your jade template you can access the session variables like this:

div.user-email #{session.user_email}

Answer 4

In express 3.x, dynamicHelpers have been removed so you will need to use a combination of middleware and res.locals. Let's say we want to access req.query in a /signup/new view:

localQuery = function(req, res, next) {
  res.locals.query = req.query;
  next();
};

newSignup = function(req, res) {
  res.render('signup/new');
};

app.get('signup/new', localQuery, newSignup);

Now any route which uses the localQuery middleware, will have res.locals.query set. This can then be accessed in your view as query.

Answer 5

just use a middleware.

app.use(function (req, res, next) {
            var origRender = res.render;
            res.render = function (view, locals, callback) {
                if ('function' == typeof locals) {
                    callback = locals;
                    locals = undefined;
                }
                if (!locals) {
                    locals = {};
                }
                locals.req = req;
                origRender.call(res, view, locals, callback);
            };
            next();
});

After which you can use "#{req}" to refer to it in a jade template.

Suppose you have a 'user' object in 'req', and 'user' has a method 'isAnonymous', if your user.isAnonymous() returns true,

p #{req.user.isAnonymous()}

will be rendered as :

<p>true</p>

Answer 6

this worked for me

app.use(function(req,res,next){
   res.locals.user = req.user;
   next();
});

in pug or jade view user

#{user.email}