What does “res.render” do, and what does the html file look like?

Question

What does res.render do, and what does the html file look like?

My end goal is to load arbitrary comma-separated-values fr

Answer 1

Renders a view and sends the rendered HTML string to the client.

res.render('index');

Or

res.render('index', function(err, html) {
  if(err) {...}
  res.send(html);
});

DOCS HERE: https://expressjs.com/en/api.html#res.render

Answer 2

What does res.render do and what does the html file look like?

res.render() function compiles your template (please don't use ejs), inserts locals there, and creates html output out of those two things.

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Answering Edit 2 part.

// here you set that all templates are located in `/views` directory
app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');

// here you set that you're using `ejs` template engine, and the
// default extension is `ejs`
app.set('view engine', 'ejs');

// here you render `orders` template
response.render("orders", {orders: orders_json});

So, the template path is views/ (first part) + orders (second part) + .ejs (third part) === views/orders.ejs

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Anyway, express.js documentation is good for what it does. It is API reference, not a "how to use node.js" book.