Windows: cannot use absolut path in layout-option of response.render

[Tineler]

Following call:

   router.get('/hello', function(req, res) {
       res.render(__dirname + '/views/home.handlebars', {
           layout: __dirname + '/views/layouts/main.handlebars',
           markup: markup // Pass rendered react markup
       });
    });

leads to following error message:
Error: ENOENT, open D:\ZHAW\BA\IoT_Base\lib\views\layouts\D:\ZHAW\BA\IoT_Base\lib\plugins\IoT_HelloWorld\views\layouts\main.handlebars'

Seems to me, as if the path is handled relative even though it's obviously absolute.

[Twipped]

What handlebars engine are you using? Express doesn't do any view loading itself, so your issue would be with it.

[Tineler]

I am using express-handlebars.

[Twipped]

Yeah, you'll need to take it up with them, all Express does is pass the res.render arguments to express-handlebars. It's up to it to resolve those paths properly.

[Tineler]

Okay, I'll try. that. Thanks. :-)

[dougwilson]

@ChiperSoft is correct in how Express is working :) We basically use path.resolve to resolve your views directory (which is where "D:\ZHAW\BA\IoT_Base\lib\views\layouts" came from). Then after that, we take all the arguments to res.render and look at the first one ("D:\ZHAW\BA\IoT_Base\lib\plugins\IoT_HelloWorld\views\layouts\main.handlebars"). Since it is an absolute path, we just do nothing and pass it to your view engine and let it process all this information :)

I see you created ericf/express-handlebars#113 for anyone else who comes by.