Question

I am new to Express for Node.js, and I was just setting up a simple app by following Pedro Teixeira’s Node Tuts Episode 9. I wanted to experiment with layout files, so I set the layout to be “true.” When I did that though, it didn’t render with my layout, only with my body. How should I get it to render correctly? Below is my app.js file, my index.jade, my layout.jade, and a screenshot of my rendered page.

app.js

var express = require('express');

var app = express.createServer();

app.configure(function () {
    app.use(express.logger();
});

app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
app.set('view engine','jade');
app.set('view options', {layout: true});

app.get('/', function(request, response) {
    response.render('index');
});

app.listen(4000);

index.jade

h2 Hello
p World!

layout.jade

!!! 5
  html
    head
      title My template
    body
  #main
        h1 Content goes here
        p Testing 123
        #container!= body

Answer 1

If you are using Express 3 this is normal the way template are rendered has changed.

Your layout needs to be like this:

!!! 5
  html
    head
      title My template
    body
  #main
        h1 Content goes here
        p Testing 123
        block content

And you templates:

extends layout

block content
  h1 Something

Examples here:

https://github.com/dotcloud/express-on-dotcloud/blob/master/app/views/layout.jade#L64

https://github.com/dotcloud/express-on-dotcloud/blob/master/app/views/welcome.jade#L1

If you are starting with Node and Express feel free to clone this demo/tutorial App:
https://github.com/dotcloud/express-on-dotcloud

You can fool with it localy and discover some nice features of Express 3, if you want to share your app it is all setup to be pushed to dotCloud.