app.set('views', __dirname + '/views') in Express & node.js

Question

I'm confused with the app.set() method. As far as I know, app.set() is like this

app.get('title');
// => undefined

app.set('title', 'My Site');
app.get('title');
// => "My Site"

but in tutorials, make 'views' folder and use like this.

app.set('views', __dirname + '/views')
app.get('/') or app.get('/admin')

shouldn't it be like this?

app.get(views)

Answer 1

app.set(name, value)

Assigns setting name to value, where name is one of the properties from the app settings table.

views

Type:String or Array

A directory or an array of directories for the application's views. If an array, the views are looked up in the order they occur in the array.

app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views')); 

This will set your apps view folder to something like:

/Users/adil/Project/myApp/views

When you actually go to use the view, the view name becomes the file path, minus the root directory and the file extension. For example, if you had the following file structure:

/views/
/views/index.hbs
/views/news/
/views/news/index.hbs
/views/news/article1.hbs
/views/news/article2.hbs

You would render the views as follows:

res.render('index', {});  
res.render('news/index', {});  
res.render('news/article1', {});  
res.render('news/article2', {});

Answer 2

The views is a configuration variable that sets folder from which express will grab templates. app.get('/admin') also differs from app.get('variable'). First is a GET route, that would listen HTTP Server, the second is just environment variable of express.