Handlebars.js on Amazon Linux cannot locate a view template - express

Question

I have an Express application that uses Handlebars.js as a templating engine. I'm trying to get it running on an EC2 Amazon Linux instance; the server is running and it can connect to the database, but when I try to open the website in my browser, I get the following error: Failed to lookup view "homepage" in views directory "/views".
The application works perfectly fine when I run it locally and on Heroku (I'm trying to move it off Heroku), so I have no idea what the issue here is. I deleted the /var/log/messages file, having not realized it wouldn't be regenerated (this is my first time using EC2), so I unfortunately can't look there for hints, but I do know that if I run <environment variables> node server.js in the Amazon Linux terminal, no errors occur.
The application has a .service file in /etc/systemd/system so I can keep it live with systemctl. I assume the error is to do with the configuration of that file. It's also being reverse-proxied with nginx, but this issue was present before I set that up.
Relevant code snippets:
/etc/systemd/system/lightbox.service:
[Unit]
Description=Lightbox
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node /home/ec2-user/lightbox/server.js
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
SyslogIdentifier=Lightbox
User=ec2-user
EnvironmentFile=/home/ec2-user/lightbox/lightbox.env
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
server.js:
const express = require('express');
const session = require('express-session');
const routes = require('./controllers');
const path = require('path');
const sequelize = require('./config/connection');
const app = express();
const PORT = process.env.PORT || 3005;
// handlebars init
const exphbs = require('express-handlebars');
const helpers = require('./utils/helpers');
const hbs = exphbs.create({helpers});
// handlebars init
app.engine('handlebars', hbs.engine);
app.set('view engine', 'handlebars');
// session init
const SequelizeStore = require('connect-session-sequelize')(session.Store);
// session init
const sess = {
secret: process.env.SECRET,
cookie: {},
resave: false,
saveUninitialized: true,
store: new SequelizeStore({
db: sequelize
})
};
// general express init
app.use(express.json());
app.use(express.urlencoded({extended: true}));
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
app.use(session(sess));
app.use(routes);
// startup
sequelize.sync({ force: false }).then(() => {
app.listen(PORT, () => {
console.log('http://localhost:' + PORT);
});
});
(Not including the .env file, but it's there, the secret is present and definitely being read by the server.)
Route that renders the homepage:
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
Post.findAll({
attributes: ['id', 'title', 'text', 'created_at'],
include: [
{
model: User,
attributes: ['username', 'id']
},
{
model: Comment,
attributes: ['id']
}
]
})
.then(dbPostData => {
const posts = dbPostData.map(post => post.get({plain: true}));
res.render('homepage', { posts, loggedIn: req.session.loggedIn });
})
.catch(err => {
console.log(err);
res.status(500).json(err);
});
});

Answer 1

I never resolved this error, but I did get the app functioning by reworking it to use PM2 rather than systemd.