Manipulate data got from server into html file (using Node.js and Express)

Question

This question follows this one: Get data from Node.js via Express .

I have a server with Node.js and I use Express to build a web app. My server is already able to building an array from a database using a function (rss_interrogDB). Now I want to use this array to display a list in an html page. I already have a script in my page html that can create a list from a given array.

But my problem is that I don't know to allow the html file to use this array in this function...

I have this on my server code:

 app.get('/', function(req, res) { 
 rss_interrogDB(function(serverData) {
    res.send(serverData);             
 });
 });

And this on my html file:

 $.get('/').success(function(serverData) {
    // TO DO something with serverData
 }).error(function(serverData, status) {
    // error handling
 });

But, doing this, the html directly displays the array although I want to use it to build the html code... Is the pb in the res.send(serverData)? What do I have to write in the "TO DO something with serverData" part in the html file?

Answer 1

EJS http://embeddedjs.com/ is a good approach. Your post doesn't show the array you want to use, so here's the example from the EJS home page. Say you have the following object:

var myObject = { title:'Cleaning Supplies', supplies:['mop','broom','duster'] }

Then you can write a template file, which is basically HTML with JavaScript code embedded into tags (similar to the way PHP works), to loop through your array:

<ul>
<% for(var i=0; i<supplies.length; i++) {%>
   <li><%= supplies[i] %></li>
<% } %>
</ul>

Notice there is no script tag.

Next you'll set up the ejs module in node and tell it to render the view with your object:

app.get('/my/url', function(req, res, next){
  res.render('template.ejs', myObject );
});

And that will produce html like this that gets sent to the browser:

<ul>
   <li>mop</li>
   <li>broom</li>
   <li>duster</li>
</ul>

Here's a more detailed example: http://superbigtree.tumblr.com/post/62759231807/a-simple-example-application-using-express-ejs-and