title: AngularJS - Access node/express session information
body: <p>I am working on a node application that uses Express and Passport for authentication and authorization, and all of that is working properly.  I am stumped, however, on how I would get the current user (set as req.user by Passport) in my Angular controllers.</p>
  
  <p>I want to be able to do normal things like displaying the username in a header/navigation bar (among other things), and I am currently doing this using the Jade view engine, but I don't like mixing using the Jade view engine for some "data-binding" and Angular for others.</p>
  
  <p>Now, I do know that I could easily make a call to an api endpoint in node that returns req.user as JSON, but that seems like an ugly solution, as I would be hitting that endpoint everytime there is a page load (this is not an SPA).</p>
  
  <p>So my question basically is this: Can I get the currently logged in user in my Angular views so I can do all my data-binding client side instead of some server side (with the Jade view engine) and some client side with Angular?</p>
  
  <p>Note: No code snippets because everything actually is working as intended, I'm just hoping for a better alternative than what I currently have.</p>