How to include route handlers in multiple files in Express? [duplicate]

Question

In my NodeJS express application I have app.js that has a few common routes. Then in a wf.js file I would like to define a few more routes.

How can I get app.js to recognize other route handlers defined in wf.js file?

A simple require does not seem to work.

Erythroblast

check this answer https://mcmap.net/q/89067/-how-to-separate-routes-on-node-js-and-express-4 – Salchunas

Answer 1

If you want to put the routes in a separate file, for example routes.js, you can create the routes.js file in this way:

module.exports = function(app){

    app.get('/login', function(req, res){
        res.render('login', {
            title: 'Express Login'
        });
    });

    //other routes..
}

And then you can require it from app.js passing the app object in this way:

require('./routes')(app);

Have a look at these examples: https://github.com/visionmedia/express/tree/master/examples/route-separation

Panicstricken

Actually, the author (TJ Holowaychuck) gives a better approche: vimeo.com/56166857 – Curiel

Solves the routing issue for multiple files, but functions defined in app.js are not accessible in routes. – Codycoe

If you need some functions just put them into another module/file and require it from both app.js and routes.js – Panicstricken

I understood everything hear but require('./routes')(app) this syntex blow my mind,can anybody tell me what is this exactly, or what is the use of this as far as i know its passing app object "app" – Paugh

Dear All, This is perfectly working but when using other routes like this : require('./routes/route')(app); // pass our application into our routes require('./routes/dashboard')(app); // pass our application into our routes .... Then second dashboard route isn't working at all ... what do to anyone please help ? – Insole

There is a better answer to this question below — https://mcmap.net/q/88598/-how-to-include-route-handlers-in-multiple-files-in-express-duplicate – Selfdiscipline

What @Dimitry said. But I would add that it's a cleaner solution – Whinny

@RishabhAgrawal It looks more complicated than it is. The require('./routes') part will import the function that was created in a separate file. The (app) part will call that function with app as the argument. Importing the function as const routes = require('./routes')and then calling it as routes(app) might be easier to understand. – Ravishment

Answer 2

In Express 4.x you can get an instance of the router object and import another file that contains more routes. You can even do this recursively so your routes import other routes allowing you to create easy-to-maintain URL paths.

For example, if I have a separate route file for my /tests endpoint already and want to add a new set of routes for /tests/automated I may want to break these /automated routes out into a another file to keep my /test file small and easy to manage. It also lets you logically group routes together by URL path which can be really convenient.

Contents of ./app.js:

var express = require('express'),
    app = express();

var testRoutes = require('./routes/tests');

// Import my test routes into the path '/test'
app.use('/tests', testRoutes);

Contents of ./routes/tests.js:

var express = require('express'),
    router = express.Router();

var automatedRoutes = require('./testRoutes/automated');

router
  // Add a binding to handle '/tests'
  .get('/', function(){
    // render the /tests view
  })

  // Import my automated routes into the path '/tests/automated'
  // This works because we're already within the '/tests' route 
  // so we're simply appending more routes to the '/tests' endpoint
  .use('/automated', automatedRoutes);
 
module.exports = router;

Contents of ./routes/testRoutes/automated.js:

var express = require('express'),
    router = express.Router();

router
   // Add a binding for '/tests/automated/'
  .get('/', function(){
    // render the /tests/automated view
  })

module.exports = router;

Ardel

this one is the best answer, should be on top of the list! Thank you – Seessel

can I use this structure for Node Js Rest API? – Clamper

@M.S.Murugan yep u can build a rest api with this pattern. – Ardel

@ShortRound1911 I am build a rest api this pattern and put to the plesk hosting server, I am getting a error – Clamper

this answer should be the best – Jugglery

Answer 3

Building on @ShadowCloud 's example I was able to dynamically include all routes in a sub directory.

routes/index.js

var fs = require('fs');

module.exports = function(app){
    fs.readdirSync(__dirname).forEach(function(file) {
        if (file == "index.js") return;
        var name = file.substr(0, file.indexOf('.'));
        require('./' + name)(app);
    });
}

Then placing route files in the routes directory like so:

routes/test1.js

module.exports = function(app){

    app.get('/test1/', function(req, res){
        //...
    });

    //other routes..
}

Repeating that for as many times as I needed and then finally in app.js placing

require('./routes')(app);

Dustidustie

i like this approach better, allows to add new routes without having to add anything specific to the main app file. – Hyetography

Nice, I use this approach as well, with an additional check of the file extension as I have faced issues with swp files. – Byplay

You also don't have to use readdirSync w/ this, readdir works fine. – Pluvial

Is there any overhead in using this method to read the files in the directory vs. just requiring the routes in your app.js file? – Papageno

I'd also like to know the same as @Abadaba. When does this get evaluated, when you launch the server or on every request? – Chasitychasm

@bababa I would imagine when you launch the server. This line will probably execute once "require('./routes')(app);" – Ciceronian

Just to confirm, Node's require() function caches modules. So once something has been required once, it is not actually loaded and re-executed again. The index.js method illustrated above is a perfectly legitimate and performant way to include all files in a folder without worrying about updating your includes every time you create a new file. – Tingaling

Can you please be a bit more clear I don't seem to get this to work. Do you have any project you can link to? – Brook

and after this we must equal ` require(./routes)(app) ` in some variable as routes and call in use method like this ` app.use('./v1' , routes ) ` is it correct ? – Pedlar

@sam-corder You got me!! Better approach – Mcnary

Isn't this approach to auto import files a security risk? didn't Notepad++ have this issue with the NSA zero day where Notepad++ just blindly imported modules? – Mauk

Answer 4

If you're using express-4.x with TypeScript and ES6, this would be the best template to use:

src/api/login.ts

import express, { Router, Request, Response } from "express";

const router: Router = express.Router();
// POST /user/signin
router.post('/signin', async (req: Request, res: Response) => {
    try {
        res.send('OK');
    } catch (e) {
        res.status(500).send(e.toString());
    }
});

export default router;

src/app.ts

import express, { Request, Response } from "express";
import compression from "compression";  // compresses requests
import expressValidator from "express-validator";
import bodyParser from "body-parser";
import login from './api/login';

const app = express();

app.use(compression());
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
app.use(expressValidator());

app.get('/public/hc', (req: Request, res: Response) => {
  res.send('OK');
});

app.use('/user', login);

app.listen(8080, () => {
    console.log("Press CTRL-C to stop\n");
});

Much cleaner than using var and module.exports.

Dermatogen

This is the answer I've ended up using in 2022, thanks! – Latty

I didn't know express had been adapted to es6 imports, very nice. – Gildagildas

Dont forget CORS – Sensible

Answer 5

Full recursive routing of all .js files inside /routes folder, put this in app.js.

// Initialize ALL routes including subfolders
var fs = require('fs');
var path = require('path');

function recursiveRoutes(folderName) {
    fs.readdirSync(folderName).forEach(function(file) {

        var fullName = path.join(folderName, file);
        var stat = fs.lstatSync(fullName);

        if (stat.isDirectory()) {
            recursiveRoutes(fullName);
        } else if (file.toLowerCase().indexOf('.js')) {
            require('./' + fullName)(app);
            console.log("require('" + fullName + "')");
        }
    });
}
recursiveRoutes('routes'); // Initialize it

in /routes you put whatevername.js and initialize your routes like this:

module.exports = function(app) {
    app.get('/', function(req, res) {
        res.render('index', { title: 'index' });
    });

    app.get('/contactus', function(req, res) {
        res.render('contactus', { title: 'contactus' });
    });
}

Leopoldeen

Thanks for this awesome answer. Helped me a lot. When implementing, I realized (1) you don't need the './' when requiring since you're using path. So just require(fullName)(app); and (2) you need to add this in the beginning if (file === 'index.js') return false; or else the function will call indefinitely. – Bucci

Answer 6

And build yet more on the previous answer, this version of routes/index.js will ignore any files not ending in .js (and itself)

var fs = require('fs');

module.exports = function(app) {
    fs.readdirSync(__dirname).forEach(function(file) {
        if (file === "index.js" || file.substr(file.lastIndexOf('.') + 1) !== 'js')
            return;
        var name = file.substr(0, file.indexOf('.'));
        require('./' + name)(app);
    });
}

Ari

Thanks for this. I had someone on a Mac adding .DS_Store files and it was messing everything up. – Blasting

Answer 7

I am trying to update this answer with "express": "^4.16.3". This answer is similar to the one from ShortRound1911.

server.js:

const express = require('express');
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
const db = require('./src/config/db');
const routes = require('./src/routes');
const port = 3001;

const app = new express();

//...use body-parser
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));

//...fire connection
mongoose.connect(db.url, (err, database) => {
  if (err) return console.log(err);

  //...fire the routes
  app.use('/', routes);

  app.listen(port, () => {
    console.log('we are live on ' + port);
  });
});

/src/routes/index.js:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

const siswaRoute = require('./siswa_route');

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.json({item: 'Welcome ini separated page...'});
})
.use('/siswa', siswaRoute);

module.exports = app;

/src/routes/siswa_route.js:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.json({item: 'Siswa page...'});
});

module.exports = app;

Augie

Answer 8

If you want a separate .js file to better organize your routes, just create a variable in the app.js file pointing to its location in the filesystem:

var wf = require(./routes/wf);

then,

app.get('/wf', wf.foo );

where .foo is some function declared in your wf.js file. e.g

// wf.js file 
exports.foo = function(req,res){

          console.log(` request object is ${req}, response object is ${res} `);

}

Ramtil

+1. This is the approach shown in the official example here: github.com/strongloop/express/tree/master/examples/… – Friulian

Does this work for sharing global functions and variables under app.js? Or would you have to "pass" them into wf.foo, etc. since they're out of scope as with the other presented solutions? I'm referring to the case where normally you'd access shared variables/functions in wf.foo if it wasn't separated out of app.js. – Silencer

yes it does , if you declare the 'foo' function in app.js then app.get('/wf', foo); will work – Ramtil

Answer 9

One tweak to all of these answers:

var routes = fs.readdirSync('routes')
      .filter(function(v){
         return (/.js$/).test(v);
      });

Just use a regex to filter via testing each file in the array. It is not recursive, but it will filter out folders that don't end in .js

Dishrag

Answer 10

I know this is an old question, but I was trying to figure out something like for myself and this is the place I ended up on, so I wanted to put my solution to a similar problem in case someone else has the same issues I'm having. There's a nice node module out there called consign that does a lot of the file system stuff that is seen here for you (ie - no readdirSync stuff). For example:

I have a restful API application I'm trying to build and I want to put all of the requests that go to '/api/*' to be authenticated and I want to store all of my routes that go in api into their own directory (let's just call it 'api'). In the main part of the app:

app.use('/api', [authenticationMiddlewareFunction], require('./routes/api'));

Inside of the routes directory, I have a directory called "api" and a file called api.js. In api.js, I simply have:

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();
var consign = require('consign');

// get all routes inside the api directory and attach them to the api router
// all of these routes should be behind authorization
consign({cwd: 'routes'})
  .include('api')
  .into(router);

module.exports = router;

Everything worked as expected. Hope this helps someone.

Tailpiece

Answer 11

index.js

const express = require("express");
const app = express();
const http = require('http');
const server = http.createServer(app).listen(3000);
const router = (global.router = (express.Router()));
app.use('/books', require('./routes/books'))
app.use('/users', require('./routes/users'))
app.use(router);

routes/users.js

const router = global.router
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.jsonp({name: 'John Smith'})
}

module.exports = router

routes/books.js

const router = global.router
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.jsonp({name: 'Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama'})
}

module.exports = router

if you have your server running local (http://localhost:3000) then

// Users
curl --request GET 'localhost:3000/users' => {name: 'John Smith'}

// Books
curl --request GET 'localhost:3000/books' => {name: 'Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama'}

Stiles

Answer 12

I wrote a small plugin for doing this! got sick of writing the same code over and over.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/js-file-req

Hope it helps.

Ronen

Answer 13

you can put all route functions in other files(modules) , and link it to the main server file. in the main express file, add a function that will link the module to the server:

   function link_routes(app, route_collection){
       route_collection['get'].forEach(route => app.get(route.path, route.func));
       route_collection['post'].forEach(route => app.post(route.path, route.func));
       route_collection['delete'].forEach(route => app.delete(route.path, route.func));
       route_collection['put'].forEach(route => app.put(route.path, route.func));
   }

and call that function for each route model:

link_routes(app, require('./login.js'))

in the module files(for example - login.js file), define the functions as usual:

const login_screen = (req, res) => {
    res.sendFile(`${__dirname}/pages/login.html`);
};

const forgot_password = (req, res) => {
    console.log('we will reset the password here')
}

and export it with the request method as a key and the value is an array of objects, each with path and function keys.

module.exports = {
   get: [{path:'/',func:login_screen}, {...} ],
   post: [{path:'/login:forgotPassword', func:forgot_password}]
};   

Cynarra