Question

I’ve written a few custom bindings using KnockoutJS. I’m still unsure when to use ko.utils.unwrapObservable(item) Looking at the code, that call basically checks to see if item is an observable. If it is, return the value(), if it’s not, just return the value. Looking at the section on Knockout about creating custom bindings, they have the following syntax:

var value = valueAccessor(), allBindings = allBindingsAccessor();
var valueUnwrapped = ko.utils.unwrapObservable(value);

In this case, they invoke the observable via () but then also call ko.utils.unwrapObservable. I’m just trying to get a handle on when to use one vs. the other or if I should just always follow the above pattern and use both.

Answer 1

You should use ko.utils.unwrapObservable in cases where you don’t know if you have been given an observable or not. This would commonly be in a custom binding where an observable or non-observable could be bound against it.

In the code that you have above, the call to valueAccessor() is not actually unwrapping an observable. It is just retrieving the value that was passed to the binding in the correct context (it gets wrapped in a function to protect it). The return value of valueAccessor() may be an observable or not. It is whatever was passed to the binding.