In the Knockout.js, how do you have wire up an event/button to delete an element in a nested observableArray

Question

Here is a fork of code that nemesv wrote:

http://jsfiddle.net/GbCYp/4/

There is a parent node and nested children.

Here is a sample of the parent/child node:

 function FormElementNode(children, text, value) {
   var self = this;
   self.children = ko.observableArray(children);
   self.text = ko.observable(text);
   self.value = ko.observable(value);
} 

And here is the structure of the HTML (without the script tags)

<ul>
   <li>Parent text value:
      Children: 
      <ul>
         <li>Child1 text value</li>
         <li>Child2 text value</li>
   </li>

I need to be able to select a node by mouse-clicking it (in effect, select one of the li-tags via a mouse click); then press the delete button to remove it (last line of the code). How can I do that?

Answer 1

I think that you'll probably have to change your view Model: make a new model that contains a list of root parents in an observableArray. Then, you will be able to bind a click on each element (to click on the element to delete), and to bind a function to the click on "delete me".

Here is an example:

var Element = function(children, text, value) {
    var self = this;
    self.text = ko.observable(text);
    self.value = ko.observable(value);
    self.children = ko.observableArray([]);

    if(children) {
        for(var i = 0; i < children.length; i++) {
            var child = children[i];
            self.children.push(new Element(child.children, child.text, child.value));
        }
    }
}

var Model = function(data) {
    var self = this;
    this.els = ko.observableArray([]);
    this.currentClicked = null;
    for(var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
        var element = data[i]
        var el = new Element(element.children, element.text, element.value);
        self.els.push(el);
    }
    this.click = function(el) {
        self.currentClicked = el;

    }
    this.remove = function() {
        self.els.remove(self.currentClicked);
        for(var i = 0; i < self.els().length; i++) {
            self.findAndRemove(self.els()[i], self.currentClicked);
        }
    }

    this.findAndRemove = function(element, toFind) {
        element.children.remove(toFind);
        for(var i = 0; i < element.children().length; i++) {
            self.findAndRemove(element.children()[i], toFind);
        }
    }

}

This example is clearly not optimized, but that could give you an idea about what I mean. Here is a corresponding jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/JHK8b/1/ You can click on any element name and then click on "delete me".