When writing knockout bindings it can sometimes be handy to reference the DOM element you are writing the element for. As an example, you may want information on a DOM property or for development reasons simply want to show the id.

I tweaked Knockout to support using an $element special variable last year, but hadn’t decided to submit it yet.  Based on the discussion in knockout issue 176 I decided to clean it up and submit it as knockout pull request 474. Mbest also updated it to work with the latest knockout changes.

Usage is simple:

<div data-bind='text: $element.tagName'></div>

Enjoy!

As an aside, I’m going to be presenting on Derby and Meteor at the NodeDC Meetup on 5/16. If you are interested in Node or just want to connect with some cool DC coders stop by!

Related articles

• Beginners Guide to KnockoutJS: Part 1 (sitepoint.com)