can.Model.List doesn't fire the change event on the expando properties

[rajaravipati]

http://donejs.com/docs.html#!can.Model.static.models

{
  count: 15000 //how many total items there might be
  data: [{id: 1, name : "justin"},{id:2, name: "brian"}, ...]
}

In this case, models will return a can.Model.List of instances found in data, but with additional properties as expandos on the list:

The change event should fire for each changed expando property as all the expando properties can be accessed via the .attr method.

[justinbmeyer]

Are you changing those properties? I tend not to. Plus, list doesn't support this.

[rajaravipati]

Hi Justin,

I agree with you. But if a property can be accessed via .attr then it can be set too, which means people expect it to be able to use it in their EJS templates for live bindings.

For eg: If i manually did employee.attr('count', 500) it does fire the change event.

[justinbmeyer]

Can those properties be accessed via .attr ?

[rajaravipati]

YEP. eg: The expando properties can be accessed either via employee.count or employee.attr('count')

[daffl]

@rajaravipati I'm not sure I understand your problem. This seems to be working:

var Model = can.Model({});
var list = Model.models({
    count : 1000,
    data : [{ id : 1, name : 'first' }, { id : 2, name : 'second' }]
});

console.log(list.attr('count'));
list.bind('change', function() {
    console.log(arguments);
});
list.attr('count', 200);
​

Fiddle

[rajaravipati]

@daffl You are right & thats what i said in my earlier comment :)
The change event does work if you call it manually like you did in your example - list.attr('count', 200)

But thats not the way the expando properties gets assigned in the source code. Please see line no 732 (res[prop] = val;) in https://github.com/jupiterjs/canjs/blob/master/model/model.js
It does NOT use the attr() method to set the data.

I have created the following http://jsfiddle.net/vAv2t/ to play with. If you click the 'refresh data' button the data array does get updated but not the count property which is updated with a random number every time the findAll method is called. So the EJS template doesn't update due to the change event not firing for each expando property. Check the console.log messages.

[daffl]

Ah got it! Problem is, that .models() will return a new model list every time you call it anyway. So what you were thinking of won't work.
You are right with the properties though. I think they should be added using .attr.