How can I send data to my frontend js files in express

Question

I am using ejs to render my html pages and am passing in data like this:

        collection.find({}).toArray(
            function (err, results) {
                res.render('index', {
                    results: results,
                    nav: nav
                });
            });

This works great, however I would like to send some data to my frontend js files to keep from using inline javascript in my rendered HTML. is there a standard way to implement this? I have tried renaming my js files with an ejs extension and rendering them as well, however this did not work.

Answer 1

You can use Ajax, just create and endpoint what is send back JSON. For example:

Server - getData

collection.find({}).toArray(
  function (err, results) {
    res.json({data:results});
});

Clinet - jQuery

$.getJSON( "server-url/getData", function( result ) {
  // Do whatever what you want with this data
  console.log(result.data)
});

More details: $.getJSON