Question

94

Need Handlebars.js to render object data instead of [Object object]

rated 0 times [ 98] [ 4] / answers: 1 / hits: 120786 / 12 Years ago, thu, april 19, 2012, 12:00:00

I'm using Handlebars templates and JSON data is already represented in [Object object], how do I parse this data outside of the Handlebars? For example, I'm trying to populate a JavaScript variable on the page through a handlebars tag, but this doesn't work.

Any suggestions? Thank you!

EDIT:

To clarify, I'm using ExpressJS w/ Handlebars for templating. In my route, I have this:

var user = {}

user = {'id' : 123, 'name' : 'First Name'}



res.render('index', {user : user});

Then in my index.hbs template, I now have a {{user}} object. I can use {{#each}} to iterate through the object just fine. However, I'm also using Backbonejs and I want to pass this data to a View, such as this:

myView = new myView({

   user : {{user}}

});

The problem is that {{user}} simply shows [Object object] in the source. If I put it in console.log I get an error that says 'Unexpected Identifier'.

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maximusbradforde

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1 Year ago

answered 12 Years ago alli · Accepted Answer

When outputting {{user}}, Handlebars will first retrieve the user's .toString() value. For plain Objects, the default result of this is the [object Object] you're seeing.

To get something more useful, you'll either want to display a specific property of the object:

{{user.id}}

{{user.name}}

Or, you can use/define a helper to format the object differently:

Handlebars.registerHelper('json', function(context) {

    return JSON.stringify(context);

});

myView = new myView({

    user : {{{json user}}} // note triple brackets to disable HTML encoding

});