how to make a meteor template helper re-run/render after another template has rendered?

Question

I have a template helper called {{renderNav}} in a template Nav

e.g.

Template.Nav.renderNav

and within that helper function I want

Answer 1

If you want the navigation to be automatically rebuilt when contentWindow renders, as Hubert OG suggested, you can also use a cleaner, lower level way of invalidating contexts:

var navDep = new Deps.Dependency;

Template.contentWindow.rendered = function() {
    ...
    navDep.changed();
}

Template.renderNav.contentData = function() {
    navDep.depend();

    // Get the data you need and prepare for displaying
    ...
}

See http://docs.meteor.com/#deps for more info.

If, on the other hand, you want to render another template manually, you can call it as a function:

var html = Template.contentWindow();

The returned html will not be reactive. If you need reactivity, use:

var reactiveFragment = Meteor.render(Template.contentWindow);

See the screencasts at http://www.eventedmind.com/ on Spark and reactivity for details on how this works.

UPDATE

To add a rendered fragment to your DOM:

document.body.appendChild(Meteor.render(function () {
    return '
hello
hello world';
}));

You can also access the rendered nodes directly using the DOM API:

console.log(reactiveFragment.childNodes[0]);