Kendo, How do you bind MVVM text: fields to a remote DataSource?

Question

I have an example of this working for local values defined in the viewmodel (observable) class constructor, but it does not seem to work when you have a remote datasource.

http://jsfiddle.net/hbuNP/7/

How could I get an example similar to the one below working for remote datasources, is it even possible?

<div id='root'>
    <label>Remote Name: </label> 
    <span data-bind="text: firstName"><!--firstName--></span>, 
    <span data-bind="text: lastName"><!--lastName--></span>

    <div>
        <label>Remote Name: 
            <input data-bind="value: firstName" />,
            <input data-bind="value: lastName" />
        </label> 
    </div>
</div>
<br/>
<br/>
<div id='local-root'>
    <label>Local Name: </label>
    <span data-bind="text: firstName"></span>, 
    <span data-bind="text: lastName"></span>

    <div>
        <label>Local Name: 
            <input data-bind="value: firstName" />,
            <input data-bind="value: lastName" />
        </label> 
    </div>
</div>
<br/>
<br/>
<div id='test-ajax'>
    <pre>
    </pre>
</div>

$(document).ready(function(){
    /**
    * #local-root example, binds to local data like in the examples
    */
    var personLocalViewModel = kendo.observable({
        firstName: 'James',
        lastName: 'Taylor'
    });

    kendo.bind($('#local-root'), personLocalViewModel);

    /** 
    * set's up a mock api endpoint for jquery and other libraries
    */
    $.mockjax({
        url: "js/data/person.json",
        contentType: "application/json",
        responseText: {
            firstName: 'James',
            lastName: 'Taylor'
        }
    });

    /**
    * test-ajax - proves mockajax works
    */
    $.ajax({
        url: "js/data/person.json",
        dataType:'json',
        success:function(response){
            $('#test-ajax pre').text(JSON.stringify(response));
        }
    });


    /**
    * #root or remote-root, this dataSource is not bidning to the html, why?
    */
    console.log('KENDO.js', kendo.data);
    var personSource = new kendo.data.DataSource({
        transport: {
            read: {
                url: "js/data/person.json",
                dataType: "json"
            }
        },
        schema:{
            parse: function(response){
                console.log('personSource.schema.parse',response);
                return response;
            },
            data: function(response){
                console.log('personSource.schema.data',response);
                return response;
            }
        }
    });

    //would this work?
    var personViewModel = kendo.observable({
        dataSource: personSource
    });

    //would this work?
    var personViewModel2 = kendo.observable(personSource);

    kendo.bind($('#root'), personViewModel);


});

Answer 1

DataSource expects to operate on a collection of records. I'm sure you can get around that with parse or schema but for this example I changed the mock ajax call to return an array.

$.mockjax({
    url: "js/data/person.json",
    contentType: "application/json",
    responseText: [{
        firstName: 'James',
        lastName: 'Taylor'
    }]
});

The first problem is that you setup the datasource but never populate the data. I added a call to .read()

personSource.read();

As I changed the responseText to an array, I updated your bindings similar to this:

data-bind="text: dataSource.view()[0].firstName"

Lastly, here's an updated fiddle