We Keep Coding

Adding text fields dynamically in Meteor without using jquery

I have a simple application form. On click of one button I just need to add text fields and on click of another button, just remove text field dynamically.
How can this be done in meteor without using jQuery as I have seen many blogs that says it is not a good practice to use jQuery with meteor. Can any tell me how can this be achieved without using jQuery.

You can use a reactive variable and a helper that returns an array based on that reactive variable to construct template-level {{#each}} statements. A good choice for a reactive variable is the Session variable, since it's built into Meteor (you won't need the ReactiveVar package or to set up your own dependencies).
Then, you can use event handlers to update the reactive variable as appropriate. For example...
//client only code
Template.test.onCreated(function() {
Session.set('inputs', []); // on page load, set this to have no inputs
});
Template.test.helpers({
inputs: function () {
return Session.get('inputs'); // reactively watches the Session variable, so when it changes, this result will change and our template will change
}
});
// Now we'll set up a click handler to add inputs to our array when we click the "add" button
Template.test.events({
'click #add-input': function () {
var inputs = Session.get('inputs');
var uniqid = Math.floor(Math.random() * 100000); // Give a unique ID so you can pull _this_ input when you click remove
inputs.push({uniqid: uniqid, value: ""});
Session.set('inputs', inputs);
}
});
// We also need handlers for when the inputs themselves are changed / removed
Template.input.events({
'click .remove-input': function(event) {
var uniqid = $(event.currentTarget).attr('uniqid');
inputs = Session.get('inputs');
inputs = _.filter(inputs, function(x) { return x.uniqid != uniqid; });
Session.set('inputs', inputs);
},
'change input': function(event) {
var $input = $(event.currentTarget);
var uniqid = $input.attr('uniqid');
inputs = Session.get('inputs');
index = inputs.findIndex(function(x) { return x.uniqid == uniqid; });
inputs[index].value = $input.val();
Session.set('inputs', inputs);
}
});
Your templates would look something like...
<template name="test">
<button id='add-input'>
Add Input
</button>
{{#each inputs}}
{{> input}}
{{/each}}
</template>
<template name='input'>
<input name='testinput' class='test-input' type='text' uniqid="{{uniqid}}" value="{{value}}">
<button class='remove-input' uniqid="{{uniqid}}">Remove</button>
</template>
As per Ibrahim's comment below, if you want to delete the text fields, you'll need to keep track of the values in the text fields and repopulate them every time you delete an element. You can see the full work-up in action here. Note that in order to do this, I cheated and actually did use jQuery, because it was way easier to do it that way (at least for me).
A jQuery-less alternative might involve rigging up the onCreated function to store a reference to each input template instance, from which you might be able to pull the necessary information, but per this question there is no way to get all instances of a particular template through the Meteor API, which would be the easiest way to do it without jQuery.
Edit:
MeteorPad no longer exists -- The code above includes handling adding and removing a specific input using the reactive Session variable. I am now maintaining the current value of the input in the Session variable, and I use this new value property to populate the value every time the inputs are re-populated (when the Session variable updates).
You can see that constantly reading stuff off the screen and updating the array of inputs in the Session variable is quite manual and tedious -- which makes me think this is probably not the best way to be doing this.

One possible solution would be to use session variables. When the button is clicked, set the value of the session variable to what you want. In your template you can show the value of the session variable wherever you need.
Also, jquery is automatically included in meteor. There are definitely places to use jquery in meteor apps. May even be cleaner than using session variables in places. Depends on the situation.

How to add extender to existing observable in Knockout

I've looked at this:
http://knockoutjs.com/documentation/extenders.html
The issue is that I'm using fromJs to create my view model, so my observerables already exist. I would think I could do the following to add an extender:
var data = result.Data;
if (!window.vmRealTimeActivity) {
window.vmRealTimeActivity = ko.mapping.fromJS(data, mappingKeys);
ko.applyBindings(vmRealTimeActivity, $('#second-btm')[0]);
} else {
ko.mapping.fromJS(data, vmRealTimeActivity);
}
vmRealTimeActivity.MyExistingObservable.extend({ numeric: null });
vmRealTimeActivity.MyExistingObservable(9999); // doesn't call numeric extender
My extender gets called the first time the extender is attached, but not after trying to change the value.
I read another SO post that stated that .extend() creates a new observerable so you have to do this, but this doesn't work either:
vmRealTimeActivity.MyExistingObservable = vmRealTimeActivity.MyExistingObservable.extend({ numeric: null });
In addition to not calling my formatter a second time, the value starts coming back NaN.
How do I attach an extender the proper way to an existing observable?

Since you are using the mapping plugin, you could specify a create callback. If you add the following to the existing mappingKeys, it would probably work (I don't know your exact mapping, so you might need to change bits here and there):
'MyExistingObservable': {
create: function(options) {
return new ko.observable(options.data).extend({ numeric: null });
}
}
This result in an extended observable upon mapping from yor data.
Here's a jsFiddle with a working example (vm1) and your current non-working example (vm2) for comparison

The above answer is correct, but for anyone interested, I found the simpler approach is to just create your view models client side and use fromJs to refresh them rather than both create and refresh them. You can then apply the answer here to support adding extend to both your parent and child view models: Map JSON data to Knockout observableArray with specific view model type
With either approach you will have to create additional mappings.

Working with current values of properties of the ViewModel with Knockout-Kendo.js

I recently found this great component -> Knockout-Kendo.js.
I use it to handle some behaviors with kendoComboBox.
The synchronization with the viewmodel works perfectly.
I want to listen changes of the control to execute some actions based on the current selected value.
I don't see any property that I can bind in the 'data-bind' attribute to listen changes but I know that internally, the knockout-kendo component listen changes and this is how the viewmodel is able to by sync with the control.
If I try to listen the valueChange event of the control, the problem is my eventhandler is catched before the viewmodel and while running in my eventhandler, I just have the previous value of the control using the viewmodel.
Look at this binding configuration in the component. What I understand is I'm able to use 'enabled', 'search', 'data', 'value' and any other exposed properties of the telerik control. What would be nice would be to define in data-bind attribute a property 'change' with an eventhandler linked in my viewmodel and be sure my eventhandler would be called after the internal eventhandler of the knockout-kendo component.
createBinding({
name: "kendoAutoComplete",
events: {
change: VALUE,
open: {
writeTo: ISOPEN,
value: true
},
close: {
writeTo: ISOPEN,
value: false
}
},
watch: {
enabled: ENABLE,
search: [SEARCH, CLOSE],
data: function(value) {
ko.kendo.setDataSource(this, value);
},
value: VALUE
}
});
I know I can try to modify the order of bind of events to be sure my eventhandler must be called after the synchronization of the viewmodel but I think it's a very bad practice.
Anybody have an idea how I can solve this problem with elegance?

You haven't mentioned why you want to do this. I can imagine two reasons:
To trigger some UI behavior/logic directly;
To trigger business logic (which may in turn trigger UI changes of course);
For people landing at this question with the latter case, here's an alternative solution. (This answer may not be a straight up answer to the OP's question, but seems useful enough to post it here.)
Suppose you have this basic view model:
var ViewModel = function() {
var self = this;
self.kendoObservable = ko.observable("Some text")
};
There are two ways you can indirectly respond to changes by Kendo. First, for simple cases, there's computed observables:
// Option 1, add this to ViewModel
self.dependentObservable = ko.computed(function() {
return self.kendoObservable() === "" ? "Empty" : "Not empty"; // example
});
This dependentObservable will be modified each time the kendoObservable changes. Basic stuff.
If you want to do something more complex when kendoObservable changes, e.g. do an AJAX call or whatnot, you may need a manual subscription:
// Option 2, add this to ViewModel
self.kendoObservable.subscribe(function(newValue) {
// Possibly do an AJAX call here or whatnot. Example:
alert("The new value is: " + newValue);
});
This will allow you to fire some complex logic each time the kendoObservable changes. AFAIK you need to check yourself whether the newValue is actually a changed value, at least in some versions of KO.

backbone.stickit and html-form: How to save (patch) only changed attributes?

tl;dr
How to use backbone.stickit with a html form to change an existing model fetched from the server and only PATCH the changed attributes (changed by user input within the html form) to the server?
/tl;dr
I'm using backbone.stickit in a backbone.js application to bind a model to a HTML-form which is part of a backbone view. This works fine so far, but it becomes a little bit complicated if I'm going to save the bound model. This is because I want to use the PATCH-method and only send the changed attributes to the server. I try to illustrate what I've done so far:
Fetching the model from Server
user = new User(); //instatiate a new user-model
user.fetch(); //fetching the model from the server
console.log(user.changedAttributes()); // Returns ALL attributes, because model was empty
The last line indicates my problem, because I thought I can used the changedAtrributes() method later to get the attributes which need a patch on the server. So I tried this workaround which I found here
user.fetch({
success: function (model, response, options) {
model.set({});
}
});
user.changedAtrributes(); //Returns now "false"
Do stickit-bindings
Now I render my view and call the stickit() method on the view, to do the bindings:
//Bindings specified in the view:
[...]
bindings: {
"#username" : "username"
"#age" : "age"
}
[...]
//within the render method of the view
this.stickit();
The bindings work fine and my user model gets updated, but changedAttributes() remain empty all the time.
Save the model to the server
If the user has made all required changes, the model should be saved to the server. I want to use the PATCH method and only send the changed attributes to the server.
user.save(null, {patch:true}); //PATCH method is used but ALL attributes are sent to the server
OR
user.save(user.changedAttributes(),{patch : true});
With the second approach there are different outcomes:
if I didn't use the user.set({}) woraround, all attributes get PATCHED to the server
if I use the user.set({}) woraround the return value of changedAttributes() is "false" and all attributes are PUT to the server
if I call a user.set("age","123") before calling save(), then only the age attribute is PATCHED to the server
So outcome 3 is my desired behaviour, but there are 2 problems with this: First stickit doesn't seem to use the set() method on the model to update the attributes if they are changed within the html-form. And second, if you call set() with one attribute and afterwards with another, only the second attributes is returned by changedAttributes().
Maybe I just overseen something in the backbone or backbone.stickit docs, so I didn't get the desired behaviour working. Any ideas about that?

NOTE: As found out the problem wasn't directly related to backbone.stickit, more to backbone itself.
Solved this problem on my own, maybe this helps someone who may stumble upon this question:
Backbone only keep track of unchanged attributes, but not of unsaved attributes. So with
model.changedAttributes();
you will only get the attributes of the model, which was changed since the last
model.set("some_attribute","some_value")
Finally I stumbled upon backbone.trackit which is a backbone.js plugin maintained by the creator of backbone.stickit. With this plugin you can track unsaved attributes (all attributes which have changed since the last model.save()) and then use them in the save-method of a model. Example (my usecase):
Backbone.View.extend({
bindings: {
"#name" : "name",
"#age" : "age"
},
initialize: function () {
this.model = new User();
this.model.fetch({
success: function (model, response, options) {
//this tells backbone.stickit to track unsaved attributes
model.startTracking();
}
});
},
render: function () {
this.$el.html(tmpl);
this.stickit();
return this;
},
onSaveUserToServer: function () {
//first argument: only unsaved attributes, second argument: tell backbone to PATCH
this.model.save(this.model.unsavedAttributes(), { patch: true });
});
});

How do I force knockout to rebind a custom binding?

I would like to know how I can force a knockout binding to refresh it's value. Normally we use an observable and that way the binding can happen automatically when the observable changes. But in my case I have created a custom binding:
if (!ko.bindingHandlers.asyncHtml) {
ko.bindingHandlers.asyncHtml = {
init: function (element, valueAccessor) {
var value = ko.utils.unwrapObservable(valueAccessor());
var parameters = value.params.concat([function (data) {
$(element).html(data);
} ]);
parameters.concat([function (data) {
$(element).html('Unable to retrieve html.');
} ]);
value.source.apply(null, parameters);
}
}
}
This is so that a function which performs an asynchronous JSON call can update the respective element (with the returned HTML) once the call completes. The element, a DIV in this case, looks like this:
<div id="myDiv" data-bind="asyncHtml: {source: getHtml, params: [myId()]}">
My problem is that, another feature on this page can change database values that require myDiv to be updated as a result. I can probably find a complicated way to correct this problem but I was wondering if there was a simpler way where I can just force the binding to reapply?
NOTE: getHtml is a function on my viewmodel which performs the JSON call to retrieve the HTML.
Thanks

I hope I understood what you are trying to accomplish correctly, but I am not sure, so let me explain how I understand your objective.
You have a div (#myDiv) which will retrieve it's initial HTML from the server.
You have an ajax function (getHtml) which retrieves this html and onSuccess updates #myDiv, possibly with this:
$('#myDiv').html(serverResponseHTMLContent);
You then have another function which may produce different HTML that should take the place of the server generated html.
If this is all correct then I would suggest you use knockout's html binding.
Your div would look like so.
<div id="myDiv" data-bind="html: myDivInnerHtml">
myDivInnerHtml would be part of your viewModel and should be an observable as you say you usually do.
Before the initial bind, call getHtml and have it set the value for myDivInnerHtml instead of actually setting the html for myDiv.
myDivInnerHtml = ko.observable(serverHtmlString);
Then when you apply the binding, myDiv's inner Html will be set by knockout.
To update the html, your client side function can change the value of myDivInnerHtml.
myDivInnerHtml(clientSideFunctionHtmlString);
If my assumptions are wrong and you have recreate the same html with different value, then you should use a template if possible and the server should not be sending the html, but instead the values to bind to the html.
Also, if the client side function is not creating html, but instead values to be bound to the html, then this will also not work.

You could look at the valueHasMutated() function which notifies subscribers that they should re-evaluate the observable.
See How to force a view refresh without having it trigger automatically from an observable? for a bit more explanation.