Is it possible to centralize all Express routes outside of the app file?

Question

Basically, I want to avoid a situation where my main app file is flooded with a list of routes. I'm wondering whether it's possible to organize the routes for, say, users, clients, locations each to its own router file, and then have a sort of master router pull all of these files into my application's entry point (eg, index.js/server.js/app.js).

I'm shooting for something that resembles this, if possible:

app.js

const app = require('express')();
const mainRouter = require('app/routes/main');

app.use(mainRouter);

main.js

const mainRouter = require('express').Router();

const usersRouter = require('./users');
const locationsRouter = require('./locations');

mainRouter.use('/users', usersRouter);
mainRouter.use('/locations', locationsRouter);

module.exports = mainRouter;

Answer 1

You can split your routes up into logical groups using express.Router objects. Each set of routes would be stored in the /routes directory with a name that reflects what types of routes its associated with, for example clients.js .

/routes/clients.js

const express = require('express')

const router = express.Router()

router.get('/', (req, res, next) => {
  res.render('clients/index', { clients: [] })
})

module.exports = router

These routes would then be imported into your app.js and registered with the app using the app.use() method. This method also allows you to assign a base URL that each group of imported routes will be nested under. Which is why you don't need to specify the full path in each of your routes (eg: /details instead of /clients/details ).

app.js

const express = require('express')

const app = express()

app.use('/clients', require('./routes/clients'))

Browse to http://localhost/clients/ and it will return views/clients/index.html back to you. You'll notice that you can group your views in a similar structure.