Knockout virtual compose with ViewModel constructors

Question

I am having some strange functionality with a virtual Knockout compose using 3 pairs of Views/ViewModels

autoAttendant.js

define(['durandal/app', 'viewmodels/settings/autoAttendant/menu'], function(app, Menu){

    return function() {
        var self = this;

        self.attendant = ko.observable();

        self.activate = function() {
            self.autoAttendant(new Menu());
        };
    };
});

autoAttendant.html

<div id="content_pane" class="pushed_right">
    <div class="content_box">
        <h1>Attendant</h1>

        <!-- ko compose: 'viewmodels/settings/autoAttendant/menu' --><!--/ko-->

    </div>
</div>

menu.js

define(['durandal/app', 'viewmodels/settings/autoAttendant/menuItem'], function(app, MenuItem) {

    return function() {
        var self = this;

        self.menuItems = ko.observableArray([
            new MenuItem('val1', 'label1'),
            new MenuItem('val2', 'label2'),
            // etc...
        ]);
    };
});

menu.html

<div class="list">
    <div class="box_item master">
        <!-- html content -->
    </div>
    <!-- ko foreach: { data: menuItems } -->
        <!-- ko compose: 'viewmodels/settings/autoAttendant/menuItem' --><!--/ko-->
    <!-- /ko -->
</div>

menuItem.js

define(['durandal/app'], function(app) {
    var menuItem =  function(val, label, active) {
        var self = this;

        console.log('val:', val, 'label:', label, 'active:', active); // purely for testing purposes

        var _val = val || 'default_val',
            _label = label || 'default_label',
            _active = active || false;

        self.val = ko.observable(_val);
        self.label = ko.observable(_label);
        self.active = ko.observable(_active);
    };
    return menuItem;
});

menuItem.html

<div class="level">
    <div class="box_item clickable">
        <!-- html content -->
    </div>
</div>

Together these represent a single page within settings that displays a menu and that menu's sub-items.

Menu and MenuItem must be detached from the attendant View/ViewModel as the menu itself is recursive and a menuItem can link to a sub-menu with its own menuItems.

The problem comes in at the 2nd ko compose. The console.log occurs 3 times and the first 2 it shows the correct passing arguments to the MenuItem constructors in the menu.js:

val: val1 label: label1 active: undefined

At the final console.log print out, the parameters that had been passed are overwritten like so:

val: <!-- ko compose: 'viewmodels/settings/autoAttendant/menuItem' --><!--/ko--> label: Object {model: "viewmodels/settings/autoAttendant/menuItem", bindingContext: L.b.z, activeView: null} active: undefined

Why does this happen?

Answer 1

The following worked, after thorough research into the source and (more than) a little bit of experimentation:

<!-- ko compose: {view:'settings/autoAttendant/menuItem'} --><!--/ko-->

From Durandal docs on compose