Express 3.x best layout implementation (template engines)

Question

From what I've read, ExpressJS 3, dropped support of layouts, leaving it to the template engines. So if an engine, doesn't have a support for layouts, what's the best Node.js module that will have it? Or if best sounds subjective, not best but at least a working solution?

I'm going to use Hogan.js as a template engine.

Or, maybe there's a better alternative to layouts as a concept? I find it rather helpful but will like to read about other approaches.

Answer 1

There are plenty of template engines.

Here are some good ones I know:

• Handlebars - very good extention of {{mustache}}.
• Jade - very powerfull template engine from visionmedia (the author of express.js) and my favorite one.
• ejs - another template engine from visionmedia.

You'll find more engines here - in this question.

Answer 2

You can take a look of the following templates that is supported in node.js:

https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/modules#wiki-templating

Also this is benchmark that compares different types of templates according to thier rendering time

https://github.com/Deathspike/template-benchmark

My suggestion: ejs and jade is very powerful and have a lot of features and both are supported in express

Answer 3

I'm using express-ejs-layouts and works perfectly with underscore/lodash and ejs templates.