Feature request View global option ignore extname

[reggi]

In react-engine you set the view engine via a global app.set variable.

app.set('view engine', 'js')

My request is for another global view option

app.set('view ignore extname', true)

Here's why:

In react engine you pass the current page url to res.render

app.get("/", function(req, res){
  return res.render(req.url, data)
})

When that url has a period it is picked up by a rendering engine the as an extname. So for the url /hello?url=google.com you get an error because it's looking for the module com.

You can enable periods in react-engine simply by commenting out this line. I'm putting in a pull request to copy the whole View with this line commented but it would be great if express supported it.

Is there a way to do this already?

[dougwilson]

Hi @reggi ! I'm not sure what feature you are requesting. Can you add more details/specificity?

[reggi]

Sorry @dougwilson I pressed enter too quickly and it posted with no content, updated!

[dougwilson]

Unfortunately view names are specifically file system based names. This means you cannot pass in URLs. At best, you can always do res.render(url.parse(req.url).pathname, data) to strip off the query string.

[dougwilson]

Actually, something we could do is provide something better than a "default" engine, or even expand the default engine in Express 5.0 to include files that have an extension but no mapping.

[reggi]

@dougwilson in the case of react-engine it allows (encourages you) you to pass in req.url. They have methods of rending a specific react view based on the entire url.

Here's a log from this at line [75 of view.js]

Visiting route with this.ext uncommented. (Error Cannot find module 'world')

{ useRouter: true,
  defaultEngine: 'js',
  ext: '.world',
  name: '/hello.world',
  root: '/Users/thomas/Desktop/node-app/public/views' }

Visiting route with this.ext commented. (Works)

{ useRouter: true,
  defaultEngine: 'js',
  name: '/hello.world',
  root: '/Users/thomas/Desktop/node-app/public/views',
  ext: '.js' }

[dougwilson]

Yes, they can recommend stuff all they want, but it doesn't change the fact that our current views only work with file system names. Frankly, their documentation is wrong/incomplete. You need to use res.render(url.parse(req.url).pathname, data) to strip off the query string.

[reggi]

@dougwilson The example above is the url /hello.world this error would occur with the period in any part of the url even /index.html, so it's not specific to periods in the query string.

[dougwilson]

@dougwilson The example above is the url /hello.world this error would occur with the period in any part of the url even /index.html.

I've already provided the solution we will implement at #2708 (comment) which would work for the use-case you presented here.

[reggi]

Thanks a bunch @dougwilson! Excited to see this feature in Express 5.

[syzer]

👍

[hacksparrow]

@reggi if there's no route defined for /hello.world, wouldn't it 404? Can you show a simple example of reproducing the extension error?

@dougwilson I am taking a look at this. Can you explain "include files that have an extension but no mapping" with an example?

[czaarek99]

@dougwilson I'd also be interested in actually implementing this but as it stands it's not clear what is actually requested as @hacksparrow explained.