Question

I use the jTemplates plugin to load data on my tables. Because there are some properties I do not display yet I want available for later use, I save them in hidden fields and then grab them by their CSS’s class name and jQuery’s siblings method.

Is this a correct way of doing such operation, or would this be considered terrible code?

<script type="text/javascript">
$(function() {
    $("#edit").click(function(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        var $this = $(this);

        var date = {
            Id:        $this.siblings(".tid").val(),
            StartDate: $this.siblings(".tdate1").val(),
            EndDate:   $this.siblings(".tdate2").val(),
            ClientId:  $this.siblings(".tclient").val(),
            UserId:    $this.siblings(".tuser").val()
        };

        processDate(date);
    });
});
</script>

<textarea id="template" class="ui-helper-hidden">
<table id="dates">
    <thead>
        <tr>
            <th>Id</th>
            <th>Start Date</th>
            <th>End Date</th>
            <th>Client</th>
            <th></th>
       </tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        {#foreach $T as record}
            <tr>
                <td>{ $T.record.Id }</td>
                <td>{ formatDate($T.record.StartDate) }</td>
                <td>{ formatDate($T.record.EndDate) }</td>
                <td>{ $T.record.Client.Name }</td>
                <td>
                    <button id="edit">Edit</button>
                    <input type="hidden" class="tid"        value='{ $T.record.Id }' />
                    <input type="hidden" class="tdate1"     value='{ $T.record.StartDate }' />
                    <input type="hidden" class="tdate2"     value='{ $T.record.EndDate }' />
                    <input type="hidden" class="tclient"    value='{ $T.record.Client.Id }' />
                    <input type="hidden" class="tuser"    value='{ $T.record.User.Id }' />
                </td>
            </tr>
        {#/for}
    </tbody>
</table>
</textarea>

Suggestions will be gladly accepted. 🙂

Answer 1

What you have works, though you could also use data attributes like this:

    {#foreach $T as record}
        <tr data-tid="{ $T.record.Id }" data-tdate1="{ $T.record.StartDate }" data-tdate2="{ $T.record.EndDate }" data-tclient="{ $T.record.Client.Id }" data-tuser="{ $T.record.User.Id }">
            <td>{ $T.record.Id }</td>
            <td>{ formatDate($T.record.StartDate) }</td>
            <td>{ formatDate($T.record.EndDate) }</td>
            <td>{ $T.record.Client.Name }</td>
            <td>
                <button class="edit">Edit</button>
            </td>
        </tr>
    {#/for}

Then to get an attribute for example when clicking the edit button:

$(".edit").click(function() {
  var user = $(this).closest("tr").attr("data-tuser");
  //do something...
});

Note the change to the edit button…you should use a class instead of an ID here, since it’s repeated.

As a side note, because of a recent change in the main branch, in jQuery 1.5 you’ll be able to do .data("tuser") instead of .attr("data-tuser").