Error: Failed to lookup view in Express

Question

Note: my auto answer at end of the post

I'm trying to make a better experience of nodeJS and i don't really like to get all the script in one file.

so, following a post here i use this structure

./
 config/
   enviroment.js
   routes.js
 public/
   css/
     styles.css
   images
 views
   index
     index.jade
   section
     index.jade
   layout.jade
 app.js

My files are right now:

app.js

var express = require('express');
var app = module.exports = express.createServer();

require('./config/enviroment.js')(app, express);
require('./config/routes.js')(app);

app.listen(3000);

enviroment.js

module.exports = function(app, express) {
    app.configure(function() {
        app.use(express.logger());
        app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));
        app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
        app.set('view engine', 'jade'); //extension of views

    });

    //development configuration
    app.configure('development', function() {
        app.use(express.errorHandler({
            dumpExceptions: true,
            showStack: true
        }));
    });

    //production configuration
    app.configure('production', function() {
        app.use(express.errorHandler());
    });

};

routes.js

module.exports = function(app) {

    app.get(['/','/index', '/inicio'], function(req, res) {
        res.render('index/index');
    });

    app.get('/test', function(req, res) {
        //res.render('index/index');
    });

};

layout.jade

!!! 5
html
    head
        link(rel='stylesheet', href='/css/style.css')
        title Express + Jade
    body
        #main
            h1 Content goes here
            #container!= body

index/index.jade

h1 algoa

The error i get is:

Error: Failed to lookup view "index/index" at Function.render (c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\node_modules\express\lib\application.js:495:17) at render (c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\node_modules\express\lib\response.js:614:9) at ServerResponse.render (c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\node_modules\express\lib\response.js:638:5) at c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\config\routes.js:4:7 at callbacks (c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\node_modules\express\lib\router\index.js:177:11) at param (c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\node_modules\express\lib\router\index.js:151:11) at pass (c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\node_modules\express\lib\router\index.js:158:5) at Router._dispatch (c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\node_modules\express\lib\router\index.js:185:4) at Object.router [as handle] (c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\node_modules\express\lib\router\index.js:45:10) at next (c:\xampp\htdocs\nodejs\buses\node_modules\express\node_modules\connect\lib\proto.js:191:15)

But i don't really know what is the problem...

I'm starting thinking is because the modules exports...

Answer: Far away the unique solution i found is to change the place i defined app.set('views') and views engine

I moved it to the app.js and now is working well.

var express = require('express');
var app = module.exports = express.createServer();


require('./config/enviroment.js')(app, express);

app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
app.set('view engine', 'jade');

require('./config/routes.js')(app);

app.listen(3000);

I don't really understand the logic behind this but i gonna supose it have one.

Answer 1

Adding to @mihai's answer:

If you are in Windows, then just concatenating __dirname' + '../public' will result in wrong directory name (For example: c:\dev\app\module../public).

Instead use path, which will work irrespective of the OS:

var path = require ('path');
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname + '../public')));

path.join will normalize the path separator character and will return correct path value.