5

Searching for a way to automatically pass in a value to a view using express on every request.

I'm using this middleware in my startup script, which basically gets an array of stylesheets which I output in the view.

app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    req.styles = helper.getStylesForPage(req.originalUrl);
    next();
});

I can then use it when rendering the page:

router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
    res.render('index', {
        styles: req.styles
    });
});

What I'm looking for is a way for this value to automatically be put into this object that's passed into the view, possibly in the middleware function so I don't have to manually do it in every route.

ncf
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  • Aren't you already doing it? _"to automatically be put into this object that's passed into the view, possibly in the middleware function so I don't have to manually do it in every route."_, the first code snippet seems to do that. – diegoaguilar Mar 23 '16 at 05:50
  • @diegoaguilar well, it's being put into the `req` object, I mean automatically put it in the object that's passed into the view in the second code sample. – ncf Mar 23 '16 at 05:51
  • @diegoaguilar yes. – ncf Mar 23 '16 at 05:53
  • Is it the same view for all of your routes? – diegoaguilar Mar 23 '16 at 05:59
  • No it's not... I actually figured it out. See my answer if you're interested. – ncf Mar 23 '16 at 06:00

1 Answers1

5

I figured it out, it turns out I can use res.locals. I just switched my middleware function to:

app.use(function(req, res, next) {
    res.locals.styles = helper.getStylesForPage(req.originalUrl);
    next();
});

As a sidenote, if you aren't aware what res.locals is, this object is exposed in your view, and is essentially doing the same thing as this: 

router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
    res.render('index', {
        styles: helper.getStylesForPage(req.originalUrl)
    });
});

The only difference is that it's in a re-usable middleware function, so I don't have to put it on every route now.

ncf
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