Question

I’ve got an issue where I’m using template.render to render an array of items based on a html template. Each item in the array also contains another array, that I want to bind to another template, within the parent element for the area. I know I can use a grid layout for groups, but I’m trying to accomplish this another way, so please, no suggestions to use a different control, I’m just curious as to why the following doesn’t work correctly.

   //html templates
   <div id="area-template" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template">
    <h1 class="area-title" data-win-bind="innerHTML:title"></h1>
    <div class="items">

    </div>
  </div>

<div id="item-template" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template">
    <h2 class="item-title" data-win-bind="innerHTML:title"></h2>
</div>

   // JS in ready event
   var renderer = document.getElementsByTagName('section')[0];
            var area_template = document.getElementById('area-template').winControl;
            var item_template = document.getElementById('item-template').winControl;
            for (var i = 0; i < areas.length; i++) {
                var area = areas.getAt(i);
                area_template.render(area, renderer).done(function (el) {
                    var item_renderer = el.querySelector('.items');
                    for (var j = 0; j < area.items.length; j++) {
                        var item = area.items[j];
                        item_template.render(item, item_renderer).done(function (item_el) {
                        });
                    }
                });
            }

So what should happen, is that after it renders the area, in the “done” function the newly created element (el) gets returned, I’m then finding it’s “.items” div to append the items to. However, this appends all the items to the first div created. If it was the last div, it might make more sense due to closures, but the fact it happens on the first one is really throwing me off!

What’s interesting, is that if I replace my template render function using document.createElement and el.appendChild, it does display correctly e.g: (in the done of area render)

 area_template.render(area, renderer).done(function (el) {
    var item = area.items[j];
    var h2 = document.createElement('h2');
    h2.innerText = item.title;
    el.appendChild(h2);
}

although I’ve realised this is el it is appending it to, not the actual .items div of the el

I’m not quite sure what could be going on here. It appears the value of el is getting updated correctly, but el.querySelector is either always returning the wrong “.items” div or it’s getting retained somewhere, however debugging does show that el is changing during the loop. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Answer 1

I’ve worked out what is going on here. The “el” returned in the render promise is not the newly created element as I thought. It’s the renderer and the newly created html together. Therefore el.querySelector(‘.items’) is always bringing back the first ‘.items’ it finds. I must have misread the docs, but hopefully someone else will find this information useful in case they have the same error.

I guess one way around this would be to do item_rendered = el.querySelectorAll(‘.items’)[i] and return the numbered ‘.items’ based on the position in the loop

e.g

   for (var i = 0; i < areas.length; i++) {
                var area = areas.getAt(i);
                area_template.render(area, renderer).done(function (el) {
                    var item_renderer = el.querySelectorAll('.items')[i];
                    for (var j = 0; j < area.items.length; j++) {
                        var item = area.items[j];
                        var h2 = document.createElement('h2');
                        h2.innerText = item.title;
                        item_renderer.appendChild(h2);
                    }
                });
            }