2. Tutorials
  3. hapi — Views in hapi 9 (and above)

hapi — Views in hapi 9 (and above)

With the release of hapi 9, the developers stripped down hapi’s internal dependencies and removed the previously integrated vision plugin. This plugin was responsible to decorate hapi’s server object with the views method. Removing the plugin from the framework’s core resulted in losing the server.views method. Don’t worry, this breaking change doesn’t require much effort to get server.views back in hapi business.

hapi Series Overview

  1. Get Your Server Up and Running
  2. v17 Upgrade Guide (Your Move to async/await)
  3. Become a Better Developer in 2018
  4. Become a Better Developer in 2017
  1. What You’ll Build
  2. Prepare Your Project: Stack & Structure
  3. Environment Variables and Storing Secrets
  4. Set Up MongoDB and Connect With Mongoose
  5. Sending Emails in Node.js
  6. Load the User’s Profile Picture From Gravatar Using Virtuals in Mongoose
  7. Implement a User Profile Editing Screen
  8. Generate a Username in Mongoose Middleware
  9. Displaying Seasons and Episodes for TV Shows with Mongoose Relationship Population
  10. Implementing Pagination for Movies
  11. Implement a Watchlist
  12. Create a Full Text Search with MongoDB
  1. Create a REST API with JSON Endpoints
  2. Update Mongoose Models for JSON Responses
  3. API Pagination for TV Shows
  4. Customize API Endpoints with Query Parameters
  5. Always Throw and Handle API Validation Errors
  6. Advanced API Validation With Custom Errors
  7. Create an API Documentation with Swagger
  8. Customize Your Swagger API Documentation URL
  9. Describe Endpoint Details in Your Swagger API Documentation
  10. 10 Tips on API Testing With Postman
  11. JWT Authentication in Swagger API Documentation
  12. API Versioning with Request Headers
  1. IP-Based Rate Limits (Part 1 of 7)
  2. Rate Limits for Routes (Part 2 of 7)
  3. Dynamic Rate Limits (Part 3 of 7)
  4. Render a “Rate Limit Exceeded” View (Part 4 of 7)
  5. Show “Rate Limit Exceeded” Error on Login (Part 5 of 7)
  6. Disable Rate Limiting (Part 6 of 7)
  7. Rate Limiter Refactoring & Cleanup (Part 7 of 7)
  1. API Login With Username and Password to Generate a JWT
  2. JWT Authentication and Private API Endpoints
  3. Refresh Tokens With JWT Authentication
  4. Create a JWT Utility
  5. JWT Refresh Token for Multiple Devices
  6. Check Refresh Token in Authentication Strategy
  7. Rate Limit Your Refresh Token API Endpoint
  8. How to Revoke a JWT
  9. Invalidate JWTs With Blacklists
  10. JWT Logout (Part 1/2)
  11. JWT “Immediate” Logout (Part 2/2)
  12. A Better Place to Invalidate Tokens
  13. How to Switch the JWT Signing Algorithm
  14. Roll Your Own Refresh Token Authentication Scheme
  15. JWT Claims 101
  16. Use JWT With Asymmetric Signatures (RS256 & Co.)
  17. Encrypt the JWT Payload (The Simple Way)
  18. Increase JWT Security Beyond the Signature
  19. Unsigned JSON Web Tokens (Unsecured JWS)
  20. JWK and JWKS Overview
  21. Provide a JWKS API Endpoint
  22. Create a JWK from a Shared Secret
  23. JWT Verification via JWKS API Endpoint
  24. What is JOSE in JWT
  25. Encrypt a JWT (the JWE Way)
  26. Authenticate Encrypted JWTs (JWE)
  27. Encrypted and Signed JWT (Nested JWT)
  28. Bringing Back JWT Decoding and Authentication
  29. Bringing Back JWT Claims in the JWT Payload
  1. How to Run Separate Frontend and Backend Servers Within a Single Project
  2. How to Use Server Labels
  3. How to Correctly Stop Your Server and Close Existing Connections
  1. Basic Authentication With Username and Password
  2. Authentication and Remember Me Using Cookies
  3. How to Set a Default Authentication Strategy
  4. Define Multiple Authentication Strategies for a Route
  5. Restrict User Access With Scopes
  6. Show „Insufficient Scope“ View for Routes With Restricted Access
  7. Access Restriction With Dynamic and Advanced Scopes
  8. hapi - How to Fix „unknown authentication strategy“
  9. Authenticate with GitHub And Remember the Login
  10. Authenticate with GitLab And Remember the User
  11. How to Combine Bell With Another Authentication Strategy
  12. Custom OAuth Bell Strategy to Connect With any Server
  13. Redirect to Previous Page After Login
  14. How to Implement a Complete Sign Up Flow With Email and Password
  15. How to Implement a Complete Login Flow
  16. Implement a Password-Reset Flow
  1. Extend Your Server Functionality With Plugins
  2. Create Your Own Custom Plugin
  3. How to Register Plugins for a Selected Server Instance
  4. hapi Plugin for Client Geo Location (by Future Studio 🚀)
  5. Increase Development Speed With Errors in the Browser or as JSON Response
  1. Route Handling and Drive Traffic to Your Server
  2. How to Serve Static Files (Images, JS, CSS, etc.)
  3. How to Use Query Parameters
  4. Optional Path Parameters
  5. Multi-Segment/Wildcard Path Parameters
  6. Ignore Trailing Slashes on Route Paths
  7. How to Fix “Unsupported Media Type”
  1. How to Access and Handle Request Payload
  2. Access Request Headers
  3. How to Manage Cookies and HTTP States Across Requests
  4. Detect and Get the Client IP Address
  5. How to Upload Files
  6. Quick Access to Logged In User in Route Handlers
  7. How to Fix “handler method did not return a value, a promise, or throw an error”
  8. How to Fix “X must return an error, a takeover response, or a continue signal”
  1. How to Reply a JSON Response
  2. How to Set Response Status Code
  3. How to Handle 404 Responses for Missing Routes
  1. Query Parameter Validation With Joi
  2. Path Parameter Validation With Joi
  3. Request Payload Validation With Joi
  4. Validate Query and Path Parameters, Payload and Headers All at Once on Your Routes
  5. Validate Request Headers With Joi
  6. Reply Custom View for Failed Validations
  7. Handle Failed Validations and Show Errors Details at Inputs
  8. How to Fix AssertionError, Cannot validate HEAD or GET requests
  1. Add CSRF Protection on Forms and API Endpoints
  1. Report Errors to Sentry
  2. Don’t Report Errors to Sentry in Development Mode
  3. Logging Fundamentals
  4. Log to Console With Good
  5. Log to File With Good
  1. Getting Started With Testing Using Lab and Code
  2. Run Tests with Assertions using Code
  3. Test Route Handlers by Injecting Requests
  4. Inject Request Payload, Headers and Parameters While Testing Route Handlers
  1. Zero-Downtime Deployments Using PM2

Views in Hapi 8 and Lower

Until hapi 8, you can define your template engine by directly passing an options object to server.views. The code below illustrates a hapi server configuration by setting handlebars as the template engine:

const hapi = require('hapi')

// Create hapi server instance
const server = new hapi.Server()

// add connection parameters
server.connection({  
  host: 'localhost',
  port: 3000
});

server.views({  
  engines: {
    html: require('handlebars')
  }
});

// configure routes, etc
// …

// Start the server
server.start(function() {  
  console.log('Server started at: ' + server.info.uri);
});

Since hapi shipped with the vision plugin integrated by default, you could directly access server.views and pass the configuration object to customize the template handling for your project.

This method doesn’t work anymore in hapi 9 and higher. The section below describes how to get the view configuration back into hapi.

Views in Hapi 9 and Higher

In hapi 9, the vision plugin was removed from the framework’s direct dependencies and therefore hapi “lost” the ability to render views with various template engines. To get the server.views method in hapi, you need to manually add the vision and inert plugins and register them with hapi. Before we dive into the framework’s configuration, let’s shortly review the depdendencies section of your package.json file.

Required depdencies for hapi 9 and higher (defined in pacakge.json)

"dependencies": {
  "hapi": "^9.3.1",
  "inert": "^3.0.1",
  "vision": "^3.0.0"
}

The snippet above only adds the current stable versions of hapi framework, inert and vision plugins as dependencies. The vision plugin is required to add template rendering support to hapi. inert handles static files and directory support for hapi. This static file and directory support is required if you want to deliver static asset files like JS, CSS or images by just defining the path to the respective directory. Hapi — precisely inert — will handle everything for you!

The following code illustrates how to configure view support in hapi 9 and higher:

hapi v17

const Hapi = require('hapi')

// Create hapi server instance
const server = new Hapi.Server({  
  host: 'localhost',
  port: 3000
})

async function liftOff() {  
  await server.register([
    {
      plugin: require('vision')  // add template rendering support in hapi
    },
    {
      plugin: require('inert')  // handle static files and directories in hapi
    }
  ])

  server.views({
    engines: {
      html: require('handlebars')
    }
  })

  try {
    await server.start()
    console.log('Server started at: ' + server.info.uri);
  } catch (err) {
    process.exit(1)
  }
}

liftOff()

hapi v16 (till v9)

const hapi = require('hapi')

// Create hapi server instance
const server = new hapi.Server()

// add connection parameters
server.connection({  
  host: 'localhost',
  port: 3000
});

server.register([  
  {
    register: require('vision')  // add template rendering support in hapi
  },
  {
    register: require('inert')  // handle static files and directories in hapi
  }
], function(err) {
  if (err) {
    throw err;
  }

  // set view configuration in plugin register callback
  server.views({
    engines: {
        html: require('handlebars')
    }
  });
});

// configure routes, etc
// …

// Start the server
server.start(function() {  
  console.log('Server started at: ' + server.info.uri);
});

First, we need to register the vision and inert plugins to hapi. You can do this by passing an array of objects to hapi’s server.register function. Each object within the array requires at least register and optionally options properties to be defined. The register property is the plugin import and options is an individual options object to customize the plugin configuration. The example above doesn’t make use of options.

The second step is to define the view configuration. For that, use the callback function of the server.register method. Within the callback, you can finally access server.views which enables you the custom view configuration. Pass your individual options to the method and that’s it. Custom view support is back in hapi!

Addional Resources

Marcus Pöhls

Marcus is a fullstack JS developer. He’s passionate about the hapi framework for Node.js and loves to build web apps and APIs. Creator of Futureflix and the “learn hapi” learning path.

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