Retrieving global options from helpers.js

[Snugug]

How can I retrieve the global options from within helpers.js? Say, for instance, I've got the following:

'image-url': function(src) {
  return this.options.assets + '/' + this.options.userConfig.assets.imagesDir + '/' + src;
}

That will automatically prefix image urls. It works fine, except if I'm using from within a loop, in which case this is the src and not the global options. How can I point this to the global options?

[clavery]

Unfortunately this is how handlebars handles context. this is always set to the current context which in a block level helper (like a loop) will not be set to the global context. There is current an open issue referencing this: handlebars-lang/handlebars.js#392

One workaround would be to reference the parent context using the ../ syntax. So in your template you might have

{{#each images}}
    {{../options.imagesDir}}{{src}}
{{/each}}

Unfortunately you probably can't do this from within a helper. You also need to specify the right number of ../ depending on how deep your context is. So if you are two loops deep you would need ../../ to reach the root context. There may be a more elegant workaround I'm not thinking of.

I'm considering making the renderer used configurable and adding support for https://github.com/linkedin/dustjs because I think that would be more powerful than handlebars. I think adding support to override handlebars from the grunt config with a custom render function first would be best.