According to the Meteor documentation, a callback assigned to Template.template_name.rendered will execute after each instance of template_name has finished rendering. I have been trying to use this feature to attach jQuery plugins (such as TagsManager or DotDotDot) to DOM elements generated by the templates. The "natural" way to do this would be something like:
Template.template_name.rendered = function () {
var template = this;
var elem = $('input#tags'+template.data._id);
elem.tagsManager(); // doesn't work
}
However, this does not work -- the expected behaviors do not come out attached to the element. The jQuery selector works properly and, by logging the internals of tagsManager()
, I can see that the event handlers do seem to get attached, but after .tagsManager()
finishes up, they are somehow unattached.
The "usual" solutions of wrapping the code in a $(document).ready
or a short setTimeout
suffer from the exact same behavior:
Template.template_name.rendered = function () {
var template = this;
$(document).ready(function () {
window.setTimeout(function () {
var elem = $('input#tags'+template.data._id);
elem.tagsManager();
}, 100); // 0.1 seconds + $(document).ready doesn't work
});
}
I only got it to work by giving an unrealistically high setTimeout
time, such as 3 seconds:
Template.song.rendered = function () {
var template = this;
console.log("Template for "+template.data.title+" created");
$(document).ready(function () {
window.setTimeout(function () {
var elem = $('input#tags'+template.data._id);
elem.tagsManager();
}, 3000); // 3 seconds + $(document).ready works
});
}
As a matter of fact, even replacing elem.tagsManager()
by a simple elem.on('click',...)
suffers from the same behaviors as described above -- which is why the guys at Meteor have given us Template.template_name.events
, I guess. However, this kind of breaks all interesting plugins, and forces us to rely on hacky, dangerous code such as the above. Is there a better way?