How to handle separate layouts of different namespaces in compoundjs

Question

Hey guys i am a noob who has just started working on nodejs . I am developing a web application on nodejs using compoundjs.

This is the structure of my view folder

views/
|-- admin
|   |-- games
|   |-- squadplayertypes
|   `-- toursection
|       |-- tourformats
|       |-- tourmatchtypes
|       `-- tours
|-- layouts
|   |-- admin
|   |   `-- toursection

I have created a name space to handle all requests that are directed to "/admin".

Now I want to know if there is away where I can define a common layout for all the routes inside the namespace "admin".

This is how i have written my routes.js

    admin.namespace('toursection', function(toursection){
        toursection.resources('tours',function(tour){
            tour.post('fetchTourDetails','tours#fetchTourDetails',{collection:true});
        });
        toursection.resources('tourmatchtypes');
        toursection.resources('tourformats');
    });
    /*Routes for squad players and all related dependancies*/
    admin.resources('squadplayers');

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 17 '13 at 21:21

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there is currently a way to do this (at least neatly in the namespace area). Layouts are searched in the controller-extensions library, where the controller's name is used to search for a layout, then it defaults on the application layout.

However, it is possible to define one layout to be used between several views. You can use the layout function at the top of a controller to change the layout. For example, I can define the layout app/views/layouts/reports_layout.ejs for the reports namespace.

Example namespace:

map.namespace('reports', function (reports) {
    reports.resources('billing');
});

Controller:

layout('reports');

action('index', function () {
    this.title = 'Billing Report';
    render();
});

Thank you @making3 . A very clean way of doing what I was trying to achieve . — guruwinder, Sep 18 '13 at 06:36

amit1310 · Answer 2 · 2013-09-18T06:48:15.680

Well I believe @making3 has pointed out a standard way to do it. Although there can be a dirty hack that can be done in the application controller if you are sure that the url belonging to your admin section will always have /admin/ in it and such urls will only load the admin layout you can follow the following method and add the below code to your application controller

before('mylayout', function(){
    if(req._parsedUrl.pathname.indexOf('/admin/') != -1)
        layout('admin/admin');
    next();
});

This adds a before handler which checks the current url without the query params and if it contains /admin/ it will set the layout for all the controller actions called with admin namespace routes.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Correctly as pointed by @guruwinder this will fail if you have configured the routes to accept a param in :param fashion. So please be careful before using this.

This solution will work for most cases but if I have defined a route as _/signin/:param/_ and in place of param i send **admin** then your solution fails. — guruwinder, Sep 18 '13 at 06:47
I agree that you can do this. If you're going this far with it, I would suggest implementing a flexible way into the controller library, that could look up a layout based on the parent path. `/admins/toursection` would attempt to find the admins_layout for example. — matth, Sep 18 '13 at 13:24

How to handle separate layouts of different namespaces in compoundjs

2 Answers2