adding .css file to ejs

In order to serve up a static CSS file in express app (i.e. use a css style file to style ejs "templates" files in express app). Here are the simple 3 steps that need to happen:

  1. Place your css file called "styles.css" in a folder called "assets" and the assets folder in a folder called "public". Thus the relative path to the css file should be "/public/assets/styles.css"

  2. In the head of each of your ejs files you would simply call the css file (like you do in a regular html file) with a <link href=… /> as shown in the code below. Make sure you copy and paste the code below directly into your ejs file <head> section

    <link href= "/public/assets/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

  3. In your server.js file, you need to use the app.use() middleware. Note that a middleware is nothing but a term that refers to those operations or code that is run between the request and the response operations. By putting a method in middleware, that method will automatically be called everytime between the request and response methods. To serve up static files (such as a css file) in the app.use() middleware there is already a function/method provided by express called express.static(). Lastly, you also need to specify a request route that the program will respond to and serve up the files from the static folder everytime the middleware is called. Since you will be placing the css files in your public folder. In the server.js file, make sure you have the following code:

    // using app.use to serve up static CSS files in public/assets/ folder when /public link is called in ejs files
// app.use("/route", express.static("foldername"));
app.use('/public', express.static('public'));

After following these simple 3 steps, every time you res.render('ejsfile') in your app.get() methods you will automatically see the css styling being called. You can test by accessing your routes in the browser.


Your problem is not actually specific to ejs.

2 things to note here

  1. style.css is an external css file. So you dont need style tags inside that file. It should only contain the css.

  2. In your express app, you have to mention the public directory from which you are serving the static files. Like css/js/image

it can be done by

app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));

assuming you put the css files in public folder from in your app root. now you have to refer to the css files in your tamplate files, like

<link href="/css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

Here i assume you have put the css file in css folder inside your public folder.

So folder structure would be

.
./app.js
./public
    /css
        /style.css

Tags:

Css

Node.Js

Express

Ejs

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