Question

I have an NodeJS Express app that is getting really big in just one file (app.js).

I want to export all my routes into a single, external file, say ./lib/routes.js. How to do that?

How to export the following bit of code and require it correctly in main app.js?

app.get('/logout', function(req, res) {
    res.render('logout', {
        username: req.session.username
    });
});

app.get('/dashboard', function(req, res) {
    res.render('dashboard', {
        username: req.session.username
    });
});

app.get('/login', function(req, res) {
    res.render('login', {
        badLogin: false,
        loginError: false
    });
});

Answer 1

Why not do something like this:

// logout.js
module.exports = function(req, res){
  res.render('logout', {
    username: req.session.username
  });
});

// dashboard.js
module.exports = function(req, res){
  res.render('dashboard', {
    username: req.session.username
  });
});

// login.js
module.exports = function(req, res){
  res.render('login', {
    badLogin: false,
    loginError: false
  });
});

// app.js
app.get('/logout', require('logout'));
app.get('/dashboard', require('dashboard'));
app.get('/login', require('login'));

Also, you could imagine easily using http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.8/api/fs.html#fs.readdir to loop through a routes directory and load these up programmatically.

You could even do something along the lines of…

module.exports.handler[] = {
    method : 'get',
    route  : '/login',
    action : res.render('login', {
       badLogin: false,
       loginError: false
    });
}

Though I think I’d spend a little time thinking about how to simplify that.