How to handle get requests automatically if template exists (using node.js+express)

Question

I'm using node.js with express (and EJS as the template language) and would like to know if there is an easy way to automatically handle serving pages matching a given path if a template exists in the template directory.

For example:

app.get('/subdir/:pagename', function(req, res, next) {
    // Automatically & securely load 'pagename' only if 
    // '/subdir/pagename.ejs' exists in my template dir
    res.render(subdir/pagename);
});

I know I could just write a secure handler for this myself by striping everything that isn't A-z0-9-_ from :pagename and then checking if the file exists (and serving a 404 if it doesn't) but curious to know if there is a better way built into node.js than writing some boilerplate to handle it it.

NB: I have static pages served this way already, the only reason these pages are not static are they use the layout system to give them a common header+footer.

Will happily accept "No there isn't." as an answer if there are any Express experts or anyone who's looked into this already!

Answer 1

Been using express since the beginning – sorry, the answer is no. TJ did this for good reason as this functionality is specific to your use case and doesn't belong in a framework. You could look to see if anyones written a module in npm for this feature, but as you know, its not very hard to roll your own.

Happy Hacking! =)