Knockout Subscribe to any change in observable complex object

Question

I have a viewmodel which contains an observable, which is initialized with an object. this object itself contains observables.

my goal is to be notified whenever that object changes (or: when any observable in that object changes)

jsfiddle

complex object:

var ns = ns || {};  ns.ComplexObj = function (item) {     var self = this;      if (!item) {         item = {};     }      self.id = item.Id || '';     self.company = ko.observable(item.Company || '');     self.email = ko.observable(item.Email || '');      self.company.subscribe(function () {        console.log('debug: company changed');     });      return self; }; 

viewmodel

ns.mainvm = function () {    var simpleObject = ko.observable('i am pretty simple');     simpleObject.subscribe(function (newValue) {        document.getElementById('simpleSubscribtionFeedback').innerText = newValue;    });     var complexObject = ko.observable(ns.ComplexObj());    complexObject.subscribe(function (newValue) {        // i would like to react to any change in complex object        document.getElementById('complexSubscribtionFeedback').innerText = 'i dont get executed :(';    });     return {        simpleObject: simpleObject,        complexObject: complexObject    }; }; 

binding

var container = document.getElementById('wrapper'); if (container) {    ko.applyBindings(ns.mainvm, container); } else {    console.warn("container for binding ko not found"); } 

is there any possiblity to react on changes on a complex object? any help is appreciated.

i already tried the dirtyFlag solutions (link in the comments), from rpniemeyer. the problem with a dirty flag on the complex object is, that when it switches to "true" and i'm hooking into the subscription of that flag, thats only ok for the first time. to react to further changes, i would need to set the dirtyFlag to false again (after doing my stuff in the subscription). which would lead into a subscription loop.

Answer 1

You can use the following trick:

ko.computed(function() {     return ko.toJSON(complexObject); }).subscribe(function() {     // called whenever any of the properties of complexObject changes }); 

See http://jsfiddle.net/xcajt4qn/3/

The reason why this works is ko.toJSON will recursively read all the properties in the object, therefore making the computed depend on all the properties.