Using Jade That Comes With Express.js

Question

So I've got a project that uses Express.js and Jade. There are a few Jade snippets that I use to create HTML inside the Node.js app.

Example:

var jade = require('jade');

var jadeStr = jade.compile('<h1 class="#{ var.class }">var.heading</h1>');
var jadeObj = { class: "heading", heading: "Example heading text."};

var htmlString = jadeStr(jadeObj);
// use htmlString for a log or error message or whatever

Right now my package.json file includes both Express.js and Jade, I'd prefer to rely on Express to supply the Jade package, as I don't want to worry about keeping Express and Jade versions in-sync.

When I remove Jade from my package.json, it errors that it can't find the Jade library. Is there a way of getting the Jade library used by Express.js without including it separately in my package.json file?

Answer 1

In express 3.4, jade is specified in devDependencies, which means it won't get installed when you run npm install express; you are required to install it yourself. However, since it's unlikely that express will break backwards compatibility with jade very often, there is no need to update it.

Answer 2

You could move jade from devDependencies to dependencies in the express module package.json inside node_modules.