Express - Create a new view engine

Question

I know that expressjs supports many view engines, like: ejs, jade, etc. I saw a list here: http://expressjs-book.com/forums/topic/how-to-use-alternative-non-jade-template-engines-with-express/.

My question is how can I create my own view engine. I've looked in ejs and in other engines' source-code but I didn't really find an expressjs documentation on how to create a new engine, what are the requirements, or a tutorial about it.

Is it possible to create a new custom view engine? Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes, of course. Take a look at this list for templating engines.

Regarding express itself, what you need to do is create a plugin, or even a middleware function - that will attach your render, renderFile and similar methods to the response object.

If you don't use an express engine and try to, say, response.render('index.ejs');, you'll get an error. But if that response object has a render method, you're fine. So it boils down to extending expresses' response object with what you need.