{{#foreach}}{{else}} fails inside {{#get}} statements with no results

[HenryMarshall]

I'm working on a Ghost Theme and am having trouble getting the foreach helper to respect the else condition (or negation) in conjunction with #get.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Enable "Public API" in Ghost's "Settings > Labs > Enable Beta Features"
2. Add the following code to any .hbs page

{{!-- Obviously, this tag should not exist --}}
{{#get filter="tags:does-not-exist"}}

  {{#foreach posts}}
    foo
  {{else}}
    fails to show up
  {{/foreach}}

  {{^foreach posts}}
    fails to show up
  {{/foreach}}

  {{!-- Problem persists using #posts shorthand --}}
  {{#posts}}
    foo
  {{else}}
    fails to show up
  {{/posts}}

  {{^posts}}
    fails to show up
  {{/posts}}

{{/get}}

3. Check that page in your browser

Expected Result: "fails to show up" appears 4 times (once for each reference).
Observed Result: "fails to show up" never appears

Notes

#get works as expected when the tag does exist. In the above code block, you'd see foo appear twice per post found.

{{#foreach}}...{{else}}...{{/foreach}} works as per the documentation when used outside a #get helper. I had no difficulty reproducing their example:

{{#foreach tags}}
  <a href="{{url}}">{{name}}</a>
{{else}}
  <p>There were no tags...</p>
{{/foreach}}

Technical details:

• Ghost 0.9.0 and 0.8.0
• Node v4.4.7
• Chrome v52
• sqlite

[kirrg001]

Hey @hbaughman. Sorry to hear you're having trouble.
I assume the else should be part of the {{get}} helper.

{{#get "posts" filter="tags:xyz"}}
  {{#foreach posts}}
    yeah posts
  {{/foreach}}
{{else}}
  no posts found
{{/get}}

@ErisDS
the documentation looks wrong?
https://themes.ghost.org/docs/foreach#section--else-and-negation

[ErisDS]

This is interesting, and one of the reasons why we still consider the get helper a beta feature, we weren't sure if some of the ways it works were best or not and wanted feedback from theme developers, however we've had almost none!

The get helper detects if it has no entries and calls it's own else template, so you would call {{#get something}}.. execute this template {{else}} execute this template{{/get}}

So, in the case where you have wrapped it with the get helper, the {{foreach}} helper will never get to its else condition. The {{#foreach}} docs are not wrong, because if you do execute a foreach, but don't pass it any data, then it would execute its own else template.

I can see that this is potentially confusing, and this behaviour is definitely up for debate. I'm not sure if it is any clearer to not have an else template for the get helper though and it would certainly be weird if we only execute the get helpers else template if there is an error as then you would have the same problem in the case of an error.

Perhaps the best thing here is to update the {{#get}} helper docs to show the usage of {{else}} & how to handle an error. I had thought that documentation was already present, but I've realised it only exists in the cookbook section.

[HenryMarshall]

@kirrg001, @ErisDS Thanks so much, that solves it!

Perhaps the best thing here is to update the {{#get}} helper docs to show the usage of {{else}} & how to handle an error.

Once you'd explained how {{#get}} works it makes sense. I'm sure that would have headed off my problem.

To be clear, this is not my current usecase, but I can easily imagine a partial that sometimes gets used within a {{#get}} and other times on a page with [{post}] in context (e.g., index.hbs or tag.hbs).

{{! partials/some_partial }}
{{#foreach posts}}
  {{title}}
{{else}}
  no posts
{{/foreach}}

If you call that from here you'd get the titles or "no posts" as appropriate.

{{! index.hbs }}
{{> some_partial}}

If for some reason you later chose to invoke it from within a {{#get}} the behavior would not be the same unless you replicated the {{else}} condition.

{{! page.hbs }}
{{#get something}}
  {{> some_partial}}
{{else}}
  no posts
{{/get}}

Conceptually, I feel like the partial should function identically in the two different scenarios. For this reason, I think I prefer removing {{else}} from {{#get}}. Going this route would mean that the singular {{#post}} wrapper would also need to support an {{else}} (it may already, though this is not mentioned in the docs). Something like:

{{#get id="1234"}}
  {{#post}}
    {{title}}
  {{else}}
    no post found
  {{/post}}
{{/get}}

we weren't sure if some of the ways it works were best or not and wanted feedback from theme developers

A quick googling didn't discover an RFC for the {{#get}} helper, but if these comments would be more appropriate on some other page, let me know and I can repost them.

[ErisDS]

Reopened this because, at the bare minimum the docs do need updating. I'm also starting to think that the behaviour should be changed. Mulling it over for the pros and cons 😁