Simplest way to get current item index within jQuery template

Well, it's not a true separate external function, but you can slap a function onto the options object you can pass to tmpl. I've done the following and it works fine:

$("#templateToRender").tmpl(jsonData,  {    dataArrayIndex: function (item) {      return $.inArray(item, jsonData);    }  });

In the template, you can access the function from the $item object:

<script id="templateToRender" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl">  <li>    Info # ${$item.dataArrayIndex($item.data)}  </li></script>

Alternatively, instead of passing $item.data into the function, the context of the function is the tmplItem object of the template (same as $item.data). So you could write dataArrayIndex as parameterless and access the data via this.data.

Here's a cheezy hack:

${ _index === undefined && _index = 0, '' }<strong>Item ${ index }:</strong> ${ content }${ _index++, '' }

Just ran into this issue myself. very frustrating! The index of the template item for example was always available in jTemplates.Shouldnt have been difficult to add that in i would think...

Weird thing is that in Firebug I can see the key property for each $item:

But when trying to access it from a function i call from within the template:

<img class="profImage" src="${getProfileImage($item)}" />

In the function if I check the item key property either like 'item.key' or '$(item).key' I get 'undefined' and not the actual value...