How to create reusable UI with variable template? - meteor

Question

I want to do something like this:
Component file:
<template name="drop_down">
<span class="dropdown">
{{> primary_element}} <--- load the template named button
<span class="dropdown-panel">
{{> panel_template}} <--- load the template named button_panel
</span>
</span>
</template>
Usage:
{{> drop_down primary_element="button" panel_template="button_panel"}}
<template name="button"> some styled button </template>
<template name="button_panel"> panel content </template>
and then I can reuse it just like this
{{> drop_down primary_element="tmp_btn_2" panel_template="tmp_panel_2"}}
<template name="tmp_btn_2"> another button style </template>
<template name="tmp_panel_2"> other panel content </template>

Answer 1

You should be able to do this with dynamic templates. In blaze you can pass in the template to be used as a variable, as well as the data context itself. They are quite flexible.
For example:
{{> Template.dynamic template=whichTemplate data=myData }}
This would refer to the whichTemplate helper to figure out which template to use and would get the data context from the myData helper. i.e. both the choice of template and the choice of data come from variables.
In your case you are trying to use two dynamic templates in the context of your dropdown template. You can do:
<template name="drop_down">
{{#with myElements}}
<span class="dropdown">
{{> Template.dynamic template=this.primary}}
<span class="dropdown-panel">
{{> Template.dynamic template=this.panel}}
</span>
</span>
{{/with}}
</template
Then your myElements helper just needs to return the names of the templates to use as strings, ex:
Template.dropdown.helpers({
myElements() {
let p1 = "button"; // compute these two based on your own logic
let p2 = "button_panel";
return {primary: p1, panel: p2 };
}
});