Express Error - 500 Error: Failed to lookup view "index"

Question

When using Express version 4.15.2, the following (apparently commonly encountered) error appeared in the browser--- 500 Error: Failed to lookup view "index" at Function.app.render. I've read the solutions offered to several such victims, but my __dirname value is indeed pointing to the correct views folder, and the correct path for 'views' is indeed constructed in the app.js file which I'm using in the Windows command line (i.e., >node app.js). The only thing I notice that seems strange is that the 'index' file present in the views folder is named 'index.jade'. I'm using pug instead of jade. In fact, hasn't use of Jade been discontinued? Could this be the problem? Should there be a '.pug' extension now for windows, or no extension at all on the index file?

---

Per your request to see the configuration (although, it's pretty standard, and I didn't change anything but the 'jade', to 'pug'), the following is the only configuration I see in app.js. (And changing the view engine from 'jade' to 'pug' got rid of the error of not finding 'jade'.)

// all environments
app.set('port', process.env.PORT || 3000);
app.set('views', __dirname + '/views');
app.set('view engine', 'jade');
app.use(express.favicon());
app.use(express.logger('dev'));
app.use(express.bodyParser());
app.use(express.methodOverride());
app.use(app.router);
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));

// development only
if ('development' === app.get('env')) {
     app.use(express.errorHandler());
}
   
app.get('/', routes.index);
app.get('/users', user.list);

Answer 1

Yes, indeed, all I had to do was to change the extension .jade to the extension .pug on both the index and the layout file, and that solved the problem. Thus, the problem wasn't __dirname; that was indeed correct. The problem was that it didn't like the .jade extension.

Thanks for the ideas anwyay.