How to Setup Handlebars View Engine in Node.js ?

Last Updated : 27 Apr, 2020

Handlebars is a template engine that is widely used and easy to use. The pages contain .hbs extension and there are many other template engines in the market like EJS, Mustache, etc. Installation of hbs module:

You can visit the link Install hbs module. You can install this package by using this command.
```
npm install hbs
```
After installing hbs module, you can check your hbs version in command prompt using the command.
```
npm version hbs
```
After that, you can just create a folder and add a file for example index.js, To run this file you need to run the following command.
```
node index.js
```
To setup hbs view engine, you need to write this middleware in your index.js as follow:
```
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname))
app.set('view engine', 'hbs')
```
Now create the file and run the code. It will display the result.

Filename: Home.hbs

html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Handlebars Demo</title>
</head>
<body>

    <!-- For loop demo -->
    {{#each array}} 
      <h4>{{this}}</h4>
    {{/each}}
    <h4>{{message}}</h4>
</body>
</html>

Filename: index.js

javascript

const express = require('express')
const path = require('path')
const hbs = require('hbs')
const app = express()

// View Engine Setup
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname))
app.set('view engine', 'hbs')

app.get('/', function(req, res){
    res.render('Home', {
       array: ['One', 'Two', 'Three', 'Four'],
       message: 'Greetings from geekforgeeks'
    })
})

app.listen(8080, function(error){
    if(error) throw error
    console.log("Server created Successfully")
})

Steps to run the program:

The project structure will look like this:
Make sure you have installed hbs and express module using the following commands:
```
npm install hbs
npm install express
```
Run index.js file using the following command:
```
node index.js
```
Open browser and type this URL: http://localhost:8080/. Then you will see the Home.hbs page as shown below: