adding a new route to node express

The trouble is:

 routes = require('./routes'),
 user = require('./routes/user'),
 furniture = require('./routes/furniture'),

These 3 are setting your routes folders, not a specific file, express will look for a index.js ( not found, then --> error)

Inside these folders, you should put a index.js with your:

exports.xxxx =  function(req, res){
    res.render('xx', { foo: foo});
};

Then, your project folder structure should look like:

routes/
  ├── index.js
  │
  ├── user/
  │     └── index.js (with a exports.user inside)
  │   
  └── fourniture/
        └── index.js (with a exports.furniture inside)

You can add multiple export functions to a route like these:

app.js

// a folder called routes with the index.js file inside
routes = require('./routes')

.
.
.

app.get('/', routes.main_function);  
app.get('/sec_route', routes.sec_function);
app.post('/other_route', routes.other_function);

/routes/index.js

exports.main_function =  function(req, res){
    res.render('template1', { foo: foo });
};

exports.sec_function =  function(req, res){
    res.render('template2', { bar: bar });
};

exports.other_function =  function(req, res){
    res.render('template1', { baz: baz });
};

Follow a simple and consistent folder structure, then use a module to have everything done automatically.

Then never look back. Spend time saved on the rest of the important stuff.

TL;DR

$ npm install express-routemagic --save

const magic = require('express-routemagic')
magic.use(app, __dirname, '[your route directory]')

That's it!

More info:

How you would do this? Let's start with file structuring:

project_folder
|--- routes
|     |--- nested-folder
|     |     |--- index.js
|     |--- a-file-that-doesnt-share-same-name-with-another-folder.js
|     |--- index.js
|--- app.js

In app.js

const express = require('express')
const app = express()
const magic = require('express-routemagic')
magic.use(app, __dirname, 'routes')

In any of your routing files:

For e.g., index.js

const router = require('express').Router()

router.get('/', (req, res) => { ... })
router.get('/something-else', (req, res) => { ... })

Or a-file-that-doesnt-share-same-name-with-another-folder.js

Usually you might want to start a folder and use the index.js pattern. But if it's a small file it's okay.

const router = require('express').Router()
const dir = 'a-file-that-do-not-have-another-folder-with-same-name' // you can use this to shorten, but it's optional.

router.get(`$(dir)/`, (req, res) => { ... })
router.get(`$(dir)/nested-route`, (req, res) => { ... })

Disclaimer: I wrote the package. But really it's long-overdue, it reached my limit to wait for someone to write it.

Although this is somewhat old, though of sharing the way i do this. Here is a another approach which makes code more cleaner and easy to add routes.

app.js

const app = express();
const routes = require('./routes');
app.use('/api', routes); //Main entry point

/routes/index.js

const router = require('express').Router();
const user = require('./user');
const admin = require('./admin'); 

//This is a simple route
router.get('/health-check', (req, res) =>
    res.send('OK')
);

router.route('/users')
      .post(validate, user.createUser);

router.route('/users/:userId')
      .get(validateUser, user.getUser)  
      .patch(validateUser, user.updateUser)
      .delete(validateUser, user.deleteUser);

router.route('/admins/:adminId/dashboard')
      .get(validateAdmin,admin.getDashboard);

module.exports = router;

'validateUser' and 'validateAdmin' are custom middle wares, which will be used to validates request parameters or to do some pre-processing before request reach the actual request handler. This is optional and you can have multiple middleware (comma separated) as well.

/routes/user.js

module.exports = {
  createUser:function(req,res,next){

  },
  updateUser:function(req,res,next){

  },
  deleteUser:function(req,res,next){

  }
}

/routes/admin.js

module.exports = {
  getDashboard:function(req,res,next){

  }
}

If your website is so big some times I prefer to do something like:

routes/furniture.js:

module.exports = function(app)
{
    app.get("/furniture/", function(req, res) {
        res.render('furniture', { title: '4\267plieee' });
    });
}

And then in app.js:

require("./routes/furniture")(app);

It's mainly the same but app.js will be cleaner.