Question

First off, Merry Christmas!

Hopefully no one else is working on xmas day unless they’re knockout experts and really feel the urge to help me out 😉

I’m using the fabulous jQuery Column Navigation Plugin to show data to my users in a multi column fashion. It worked fine in my static testing, but now implementing it into production code I’ve hit something that hopefully isn’t too difficult to sort out.

It requires a div inside a ul element to allow for scrolling when the list gets to big. The problem here is that the foreach I’m using to create the columns wraps each child element in a div and not the entire child collection.

For example:

I should be producing HTML that looks like this

<div id="myTree">
<ul>
    <div>   <!-- required to allow scrolling within each column -->
        <li>
            <a>Homepage</a>
            <ul>
                <div>
                    <li><a>Contact</a></li>
                    <li><a>Terms &amp; Conditions</a></li>
                    <li><a>Privacy information</a></li>
                </div>
            </ul>
        </li>
        <li>
            <a>Contents</a>
            <ul>
                <div>
                    <li><a>Page 1</a></li>
                    <li>
                        <a>Page 2</a>
                        <ul>
                            <div>
                            <li><a href="./page2.1/">Page 2.1</a></li>
                            <li><a href="./page2.2/">Page 2.2</a></li>
                            </div>
                        </ul>
                    </li>
                    <li><a>Page 3</a></li>
                </div>
            </ul>
        </li>
    </div>
</ul>

but using this knockout code

<div id="whatever" style="width: 100%">
<ul data-bind="foreach: { data: Column1 }">
    <div>
        <li><a data-bind="text: Name"></a>
            <ul data-bind="foreach: { data: Column2 }">
                <div>
                    <li><a data-bind="text: Name"></a>
                        <ul data-bind="foreach: { data: Column3 }">
                            <div>
                                <li><a data-bind="text: Name, attr: { 'href': Url }"></a></li>
                            </div>
                        </ul>
                    </li>
                </div>
            </ul>
        </li>
    </div>
</ul>

I end up with HTML that looks like

<div id="myTree">
<ul>
    <div>   <!-- required to allow scrolling within each column -->
        <li>
            <a>Homepage</a>
            <ul>
                <div>
                    <li><a>Contact</a></li>
                </div>
                <div>
                    <li><a>Terms &amp; Conditions</a></li>
                </div>
                <div>
                    <li><a>Privacy information</a></li>
                </div>
            </ul>
        </li>
        <li>
            <a>Contents</a>
            <ul>
                <div>
                    <div>
                        <li><a>Page 1</a></li>
                    </div>
                    <li>
                        <a>Page 2</a>
                        <ul>
                            <div>
                                <li><a href="./page2.1/">Page 2.1</a></li>
                            </div>
                            <div>
                                <li><a href="./page2.2/">Page 2.2</a></li>
                            </div>
                        </ul>
                    </li>
                    <li><a>Page 3</a></li>
                </div>
            </ul>
        </li>
    </div>
</ul>

How can I get the internal DIVs to wrapper ALl the children and not individual child records inside the parent??

Many thanks for any help, and MERRY CHRISTMAS once again.

Answer 1

The first comment is correct… you would just do this to produce your desired HTML output:

 <ul>
     <div data-bind="foreach: { data: Column3 }">
         <li><a data-bind="text: Name, attr: { 'href': Url }"></a></li>
     </div>
 </ul>

Although having a div directly in a ul isn’t exactly valid HTML, so I don’t know why you would want to do that anyways.

An alternative is using virtual elements:

 <ul>
     <div>
         <!-- ko foreach: { data: Column3 } -->
             <li><a data-bind="text: Name, attr: { 'href': Url }"></a></li>
         <!-- /ko -->
     </div>
 </ul>

There is no (nice) way of getting your desired output without modifying the “script” as you mention in your comment.