How to include route handlers in multiple files in Express?

In my NodeJS express application I have app.js that has a few common routes. Then in a wf.js file I would like to define a few more routes.

How can I get app.js to recognize other route handlers defined in wf.js file?

A simple require does not seem to work.

If you want to put the routes in a separate file, for example routes.js, you can create the routes.js file in this way:

module.exports = function(app){

    app.get('/login', function(req, res){
        res.render('login', {
	    	title: 'Express Login'
	    });
    });

    //other routes..
}

And then you can require it from app.js passing the app object in this way:

require('./routes')(app);

Have a look at these examples: https://github.com/visionmedia/express/tree/master/examples/route-separation

In Express 4.x you can get an instance of the router object and import another file that contains more routes. You can even do this recursively so your routes import other routes allowing you to create easy-to-maintain URL paths.

For example, if I have a separate route file for my /tests endpoint already and want to add a new set of routes for /tests/automated I may want to break these /automated routes out into a another file to keep my /test file small and easy to manage. It also lets you logically group routes together by URL path which can be really convenient.

Contents of ./app.js:

var express = require('express'),
    app = express();

var testRoutes = require('./routes/tests');

// Import my test routes into the path '/test'
app.use('/tests', testRoutes);

Contents of ./routes/tests.js:

var express = require('express'),
    router = express.Router();

var automatedRoutes = require('./testRoutes/automated');

router
  // Add a binding to handle '/tests'
  .get('/', function(){
    // render the /tests view
  })

  // Import my automated routes into the path '/tests/automated'
  // This works because we're already within the '/tests' route 
  // so we're simply appending more routes to the '/tests' endpoint
  .use('/automated', automatedRoutes);
 
module.exports = router;

Contents of ./routes/testRoutes/automated.js:

var express = require('express'),
    router = express.Router();

router
   // Add a binding for '/tests/automated/'
  .get('/', function(){
    // render the /tests/automated view
  })

module.exports = router;

Building on @ShadowCloud 's example I was able to dynamically include all routes in a sub directory.

routes/index.js

var fs = require('fs');

module.exports = function(app){
    fs.readdirSync(__dirname).forEach(function(file) {
        if (file == "index.js") return;
        var name = file.substr(0, file.indexOf('.'));
        require('./' + name)(app);
    });
}

Then placing route files in the routes directory like so:

routes/test1.js

module.exports = function(app){

    app.get('/test1/', function(req, res){
        //...
    });

    //other routes..
}

Repeating that for as many times as I needed and then finally in app.js placing

require('./routes')(app);

If you're using express-4.x with TypeScript and ES6, this would be the best template to use:

src/api/login.ts

import express, { Router, Request, Response } from "express";

const router: Router = express.Router();
// POST /user/signin
router.post('/signin', async (req: Request, res: Response) => {
    try {
        res.send('OK');
    } catch (e) {
        res.status(500).send(e.toString());
    }
});

export default router;

src/app.ts

import express, { Request, Response } from "express";
import compression from "compression";  // compresses requests
import expressValidator from "express-validator";
import bodyParser from "body-parser";
import login from './api/login';

const app = express();

app.use(compression());
app.use(bodyParser.json());
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));
app.use(expressValidator());

app.get('/public/hc', (req: Request, res: Response) => {
  res.send('OK');
});

app.use('/user', login);

app.listen(8080, () => {
    console.log("Press CTRL-C to stop\n");
});

Much cleaner than using var and module.exports.

Full recursive routing of all .js files inside /routes folder, put this in app.js.

// Initialize ALL routes including subfolders
var fs = require('fs');
var path = require('path');

function recursiveRoutes(folderName) {
    fs.readdirSync(folderName).forEach(function(file) {

	    var fullName = path.join(folderName, file);
	    var stat = fs.lstatSync(fullName);

	    if (stat.isDirectory()) {
		    recursiveRoutes(fullName);
	    } else if (file.toLowerCase().indexOf('.js')) {
		    require('./' + fullName)(app);
		    console.log("require('" + fullName + "')");
	    }
    });
}
recursiveRoutes('routes'); // Initialize it

in /routes you put whatevername.js and initialize your routes like this:

module.exports = function(app) {
    app.get('/', function(req, res) {
        res.render('index', { title: 'index' });
    });

    app.get('/contactus', function(req, res) {
        res.render('contactus', { title: 'contactus' });
    });
}

And build yet more on the previous answer, this version of routes/index.js will ignore any files not ending in .js (and itself)

var fs = require('fs');

module.exports = function(app) {
    fs.readdirSync(__dirname).forEach(function(file) {
        if (file === "index.js" || file.substr(file.lastIndexOf('.') + 1) !== 'js')
            return;
        var name = file.substr(0, file.indexOf('.'));
        require('./' + name)(app);
    });
}

I am trying to update this answer with "express": "^4.16.3". This answer is similar to the one from ShortRound1911.

server.js:

const express = require('express');
const mongoose = require('mongoose');
const bodyParser = require('body-parser');
const db = require('./src/config/db');
const routes = require('./src/routes');
const port = 3001;

const app = new express();

//...use body-parser
app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));

//...fire connection
mongoose.connect(db.url, (err, database) => {
  if (err) return console.log(err);

  //...fire the routes
  app.use('/', routes);

  app.listen(port, () => {
    console.log('we are live on ' + port);
  });
});

/src/routes/index.js:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

const siswaRoute = require('./siswa_route');

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.json({item: 'Welcome ini separated page...'});
})
.use('/siswa', siswaRoute);

module.exports = app;

/src/routes/siswa_route.js:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.json({item: 'Siswa page...'});
});

module.exports = app;

If you want a separate .js file to better organize your routes, just create a variable in the app.js file pointing to its location in the filesystem:

var wf = require(./routes/wf);

then,

app.get('/wf', wf.foo );

where .foo is some function declared in your wf.js file. e.g

// wf.js file 
exports.foo = function(req,res){
   
          console.log(` request object is ${req}, response object is ${res} `);
      
}

One tweak to all of these answers:

var routes = fs.readdirSync('routes')
      .filter(function(v){
         return (/.js$/).test(v);
      });

Just use a regex to filter via testing each file in the array. It is not recursive, but it will filter out folders that don't end in .js

I know this is an old question, but I was trying to figure out something like for myself and this is the place I ended up on, so I wanted to put my solution to a similar problem in case someone else has the same issues I'm having. There's a nice node module out there called consign that does a lot of the file system stuff that is seen here for you (ie - no readdirSync stuff). For example:

I have a restful API application I'm trying to build and I want to put all of the requests that go to '/api/*' to be authenticated and I want to store all of my routes that go in api into their own directory (let's just call it 'api'). In the main part of the app:

app.use('/api', [authenticationMiddlewareFunction], require('./routes/api'));

Inside of the routes directory, I have a directory called "api" and a file called api.js. In api.js, I simply have:

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();
var consign = require('consign');

// get all routes inside the api directory and attach them to the api router
// all of these routes should be behind authorization
consign({cwd: 'routes'})
  .include('api')
  .into(router);

module.exports = router;

Everything worked as expected. Hope this helps someone.

I wrote a small plugin for doing this! got sick of writing the same code over and over.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/js-file-req

Hope it helps.

index.js

const express = require("express");
const app = express();
const http = require('http');
const server = http.createServer(app).listen(3000);
const router = (global.router = (express.Router()));
app.use('/books', require('./routes/books'))
app.use('/users', require('./routes/users'))
app.use(router);

routes/users.js

const router = global.router
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.jsonp({name: 'John Smith'})
}

module.exports = router

routes/books.js

const router = global.router
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.jsonp({name: 'Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama'})
}

module.exports = router

if you have your server running local (http://localhost:3000) then

// Users
curl --request GET 'localhost:3000/users' => {name: 'John Smith'}

// Books
curl --request GET 'localhost:3000/books' => {name: 'Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama'}

you can put all route functions in other files(modules) , and link it to the main server file. in the main express file, add a function that will link the module to the server:

   function link_routes(app, route_collection){
       route_collection['get'].forEach(route => app.get(route.path, route.func));
       route_collection['post'].forEach(route => app.post(route.path, route.func));
       route_collection['delete'].forEach(route => app.delete(route.path, route.func));
       route_collection['put'].forEach(route => app.put(route.path, route.func));
   }

and call that function for each route model:

link_routes(app, require('./login.js'))

in the module files(for example - login.js file), define the functions as usual:

const login_screen = (req, res) => {
    res.sendFile(`${__dirname}/pages/login.html`);
};

const forgot_password = (req, res) => {
    console.log('we will reset the password here')
}

and export it with the request method as a key and the value is an array of objects, each with path and function keys.

module.exports = {
   get: [{path:'/',func:login_screen}, {...} ],
   post: [{path:'/login:forgotPassword', func:forgot_password}]
};