Allow maintaining templates inside an element without Polymer stripping the content

[MaKleSoft]

As a followup on #144, is there a way to tell Polymer to not strip the content of a template element? I understand that I can still access the content via the ref_ property but the property name suggests that it is not intended to be used that way and relying on it might break my app at some point.

[sorvell]

We recommend you avoid this type of construction and instead place a template that you want to use outside of a data-binding context outside of the element's bound template. Here's one way to do it:

http://jsbin.com/toyodu/2/edit.

This way you can easily avoid having to deal with the ref concept.

[MaKleSoft]

Thanks! But I can think of at least one scenario where this won't work. Let's say we want the template to be passed in from the outside:

http://jsbin.com/nimohiralega/1/edit

Now the template is inside the binding context of the parent element, and I don't see a way of avoiding that.

[jmesserly]

Nice example, Martin. Illustrates the problem nicely. Would something like this work: http://jsbin.com/nimohiralega/4/edit

[jmesserly]

Also you can pass a "model" and "bindingDelegate" if you would like to make {{ bindings }} work inside of that template.

That's the disadvantage of my suggestion, too: createInstance will process {{ bindings }} whether you want it to or not. However, that's unavoidable since it was already inside another polymer-element's template, so the {{ bindings }} already had meaning.