Passing variables through handlebars partial

Handlebars partials take a second parameter which becomes the context for the partial:

{{> person this}}

In versions v2.0.0 alpha and later, you can also pass a hash of named parameters:

{{> person headline='Headline'}}

You can see the tests for these scenarios: https://github.com/wycats/handlebars.js/blob/ce74c36118ffed1779889d97e6a2a1028ae61510/spec/qunit_spec.js#L456-L462 https://github.com/wycats/handlebars.js/blob/e290ec24f131f89ddf2c6aeb707a4884d41c3c6d/spec/partials.js#L26-L32


Just in case, here is what I did to get partial arguments, kind of. I’ve created a little helper that takes a partial name and a hash of parameters that will be passed to the partial:

Handlebars.registerHelper('render', function(partialId, options) {
  var selector = 'script[type="text/x-handlebars-template"]#' + partialId,
      source = $(selector).html(),
      html = Handlebars.compile(source)(options.hash);

  return new Handlebars.SafeString(html);
});

The key thing here is that Handlebars helpers accept a Ruby-like hash of arguments. In the helper code they come as part of the function’s last argument—options— in its hash member. This way you can receive the first argument—the partial name—and get the data after that.

Then, you probably want to return a Handlebars.SafeString from the helper or use “triple‑stash”—{{{— to prevent it from double escaping.

Here is a more or less complete usage scenario:

<script id="text-field" type="text/x-handlebars-template">
  <label for="{{id}}">{{label}}</label>
  <input type="text" id="{{id}}"/>
</script>

<script id="checkbox-field" type="text/x-handlebars-template">
  <label for="{{id}}">{{label}}</label>
  <input type="checkbox" id="{{id}}"/>
</script>

<script id="form-template" type="text/x-handlebars-template">
  <form>
    <h1>{{title}}</h1>
    {{ render 'text-field' label="First name" id="author-first-name" }}
    {{ render 'text-field' label="Last name" id="author-last-name" }}
    {{ render 'text-field' label="Email" id="author-email" }}
    {{ render 'checkbox-field' label="Private?" id="private-question" }}
  </form>
</script>

Hope this helps …someone. :)


This can also be done in later versions of handlebars using the key=value notation:

 {{> mypartial foo='bar' }}

Allowing you to pass specific values to your partial context.

Reference: Context different for partial #182