node.js Express - How to get partial views asynchronously
As @drachenstern said, you want to render only partial HTML fragments, not whole documents including the layout. You can tell express to skip the layout using:
res.render('sometemplate', {layout: false});If you want to look for Ajax requests as distinct from full-page browser loads, use the req.xhr flag as documented here
Thus you might even be able to do
res.render('sometemplate', {layout: !req.xhr});
You can also use res.partial() which is specifically for rendering partials.
Here is a sample of its usage, where 'browse.jade' is name of the template:
exports.browse = function(req, res){ var Contact = mongoose.model('Contact'); Contact.where({}).asc('surname', 'given_name', 'org').run(function(err, results) { res.partial('browse', { locals: { data: results } }); });};