Question

With a Handlebars.js template like this…

<select>
    <option value="Completed">Completed</option>
    <option value="OverDue">OverDue</option>
    <option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
    <option value="None">None</option>
</select>

… and data like this…

{
    "id"     : 1,
    "name"   : "World"
    "status" : "OverDue",
    "date"   : "2012-12-21"
}

I want to render HTML like this.

<select>
    <option value="Completed">Completed</option>
    <option value="OverDue" selected="selected">OverDue</option>
    <option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
    <option value="None">None</option>
</select>

Which way is the easiest?

Answer 1

I found a lot of over complicated solutions and decided to write my own using a Handlebars helper.

With this partial (using Jquery) …

    window.Handlebars.registerHelper('select', function( value, options ){
        var $el = $('<select />').html( options.fn(this) );
        $el.find('[value="' + value + '"]').attr({'selected':'selected'});
        return $el.html();
    });

You can wrap selects in your Handlebars template with {{#select status}}…

<select>
    {{#select status}}
    <option value="Completed">Completed</option>
    <option value="OverDue">OverDue</option>
    <option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
    <option value="None">None</option>
    {{/select}}
</select>

and end up with this…

<select>
    <option value="Completed">Completed</option>
    <option value="OverDue" selected="selected">OverDue</option>
    <option value="SentToPayer">SentToPayer</option>
    <option value="None">None</option>
</select>

Presto!