Getting data associated with a rendered template element

[maccman]

Finding data associated with elements is a rather common use case. For example, let's say an element was clicked on, I'd love to be able to retrieve the data the element is associated with in the event handler. This is possible in jQuery.tmpl using $.fn.tmplItem(). Does eco have support, or plans for such a feature?

[sstephenson]

No, Eco deals exclusively with strings, not DOM nodes. You could build a wrapper to do this, though.

$.fn.eco = (data) ->
  template = $(this).text()
  $(eco.render template, data).data "ecoData", data

$.fn.ecoData = ->
  $(this).data "ecoData"

[maccman]

Unfortunately that doesn't work for iterations - I'm working on a helper that'll work a bit like this:

<% if @projects.length: %>
  <% for project in @projects: %>
    <%- item -> %>
      <a href="<%= project.url %>"><%= project.name %></a>
      <p><%= project.description %></p>
    <%- end %>
  <% end %>
<% else: %>
  No projects
<% end %>

[metaskills]

Nice example @sstephenson, but that seems to only work too if your templates are in the DOM somewhere vs in a JST space. Though this feature would be nice, I am going to continue to use eco and just have my controllers do the leg work of associating model data as things are rendered.