Problem with declaring callbacks in the data-* attributes

What I like about select2 is the idea to specify all configuration parameters in data-* attributes.

Suppose I have some sort of templating function stored in my namespace:

window.myNamespace = {
    templateResult: function(item) {
        if (item.loading) return item.text;
        return '<div>' + item.text + ' (' + item.price + ')' + '</div>';
    }
}

Now I want to specify this function as a callback in my select tag in data-template-result attribute like that:

<select class="select2" data-template-result="myNamespace.templateResult"></select>

Clean and cool but does not work. The reason is, as we can read from the Jquery docs: “Every attempt is made to convert the string to a JavaScript value (this includes booleans, numbers, objects, arrays, and null)”. No function in this list. So, now there is no legal way to declare callbacks using data-* attributes.

For now I’m using the following workaround: I’m prefixing all my callback names with ‘_fn::’ like this: “_fn::myNamespace.templateResult”. Then, before activating any select tag with select2(), I’m using the following function to let jQuery know about callbacks declared in data-* attributes:

function(obj) {
    var getFunctionByName = function (functionName, context) {
        context = typeof context === 'undefined' ? window : context;
        var namespaces = functionName.split(".");
        var func = namespaces.pop();
        for(var i = 0; i < namespaces.length; i++) {
            context = context[namespaces[i]];
        }
        return context[func];
    }
    var $obj = $(obj);
    $.each($obj.data(), function(key, el) {
        if (typeof el === 'string' && el.substr(0, 5) == '_fn::') {
            $obj.data(key, getFunctionByName(el.substr(5)));
        }
    });
}

Works just fine, but looks like a hack.

Maybe we can do something with select2 behavior itself to let users legally specify callbacks in data attributes without using such external hacks?

[dwasyl]

This is still an issue and a simple fix like one of the suggestions would be fantastic in the next release. Is it possible to revisit, there are existing PRs (closed) that would address the issue.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.