---
title: Using template engines with Express
description: Discover how to integrate and use template engines like Pug, Handlebars, and EJS with Express.js to render dynamic HTML pages efficiently.
---

# Using template engines with Express

A _template engine_ enables you to use static template files in your application. At runtime, the template engine replaces
variables in a template file with actual values, and transforms the template into an HTML file sent to the client.
This approach makes it easier to design an HTML page.

The [Express application generator](/{{ page.lang }}/starter/generator.html) uses [Pug](https://pugjs.org/api/getting-started.html) as its default, but it also supports [Handlebars](https://www.npmjs.com/package/handlebars), and [EJS](https://www.npmjs.com/package/ejs), among others.

To render template files, set the following [application setting properties](/{{ page.lang }}/4x/api.html#app.set), in the default `app.js` created by the generator:

- `views`, the directory where the template files are located. Eg: `app.set('views', './views')`.
  This defaults to the `views` directory in the application root directory.
- `view engine`, the template engine to use. For example, to use the Pug template engine: `app.set('view engine', 'pug')`.

Then install the corresponding template engine npm package; for example to install Pug:

```bash
$ npm install pug --save
```

<div class="doc-box doc-notice" markdown="1">
Express-compliant template engines such as Pug export a function named `__express(filePath, options, callback)`,
which `res.render()` calls to render the template code.

Some template engines do not follow this convention. The [@ladjs/consolidate](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@ladjs/consolidate)
library follows this convention by mapping all of the popular Node.js template engines, and therefore works seamlessly within Express.

</div>

After the view engine is set, you don't have to specify the engine or load the template engine module in your app;
Express loads the module internally, for example:

```js
app.set('view engine', 'pug');
```

Then, create a Pug template file named `index.pug` in the `views` directory, with the following content:

```pug
html
  head
    title= title
  body
    h1= message
```

Create a route to render the `index.pug` file. If the `view engine` property is not set,
you must specify the extension of the `view` file. Otherwise, you can omit it.

```js
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.render('index', { title: 'Hey', message: 'Hello there!' });
});
```

When you make a request to the home page, the `index.pug` file will be rendered as HTML.

The view engine cache does not cache the contents of the template's output, only the underlying template itself. The view is still re-rendered with every request even when the cache is on.
