I am counting the views on a post on my website and for that I have created a 'more' button (but styled as a link) after some text so that the user clicks on that and the view count increases. The button submits a post request and I increment the view count in the database.

The problem is that I have 2 separate pages (which might increase in the future) that display the posts and they both have this 'more' button which submits the post request to the same route. I want the user to click the button and stay on that same page on that same location but in express we are required to res.redirect or render 1 page which isn't possible in this case. I tried to redirect to ('/'), but this goes only to one of the 2 pages that I talked about and not the current page. Moreover, when redirecting, the extra paras shown on clicking that button also vanishes, basically going to the original orientation. I am happy to change the entire logic of this function as long as you cannot find any solution with this one...

router.post("/clicked-more", ensureAuth, async (req, res) => {
  try {
    let secId = req.body.clicked_more

    const sec = await XXX.find({
      _id: secId
    }).lean();
    sec[0].views++

    await XXX.findOneAndUpdate({
      _id: secId
    }, {
      views: sec[0].views
    });
    res.redirect('/')

  } catch (err) {
    console.log(err);
    //   res.send(err)
    res.render("../views/error/500");
  }
});

This is one of my 2 pages (hbs-handlebars). (2nd one has the same function as this one)

<form action="/clicked-more" method="post">
  <div class="wrapper">
    <p class="startPara">{{stripTags (truncate body 200)}}<span class="dots">...</span></p>
    <span class="content">
      <p>{{stripTags (truncate body 400)}}</p>
    </span>
    <button type="submit" name="clicked_more" value={{_id}} class="link-button buttonReadMore"
      onclick="readMoreFunction(this)">more</button>
  </div>
</form>

This is my 'read more' function

function readMoreFunction(el) {
  var parent = el.closest(".wrapper")
  var dots = parent.querySelector(".dots");
  var contentText = parent.querySelector(".content");
  var btnText = parent.querySelector(".buttonReadMore");
  var startPara = parent.querySelector(".startPara");

  btnText.style.display = "none";
  startPara.style.display = "none";
  dots.style.display = "none";
  contentText.style.display = "inline";
}