Layouts in Express 3 and EJS

Question

In version 3 of Express some features were removed:

the concept of a \"layout\" (template engine specific now)
partial() (template engine specific)

Answer 1

It seems that from Express 3, layout feature is delegated to the responsibility of template engines. You can use ejs-locals (https://github.com/RandomEtc/ejs-locals) for layout.

Install ejs-locals

npm install ejs-locals --save

Use ejs-locals as your app engine in app.js

var express = require('express');
var engine = require('ejs-locals');
...

app.engine('ejs', engine);
app.set('view engine', 'ejs');

Now you can use layout

layout.ejs

  <%- body %>


index.ejs
<% layout('layout') -%>



...

Another option is to use express-partials (https://github.com/publicclass/express-partials). The two do the same thing, so it's just your choice.