Here's an contrived example of what's going on: 

HTML:

Click me!
         

JavaScript:

function getSomeDeferredStuff() {
             var deferreds = [];    var i = 1;    for (i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
                 var count = i;        deferreds.push(        $.post('/echo/html/', {
                     html: "
Task #" + count + " complete.",            delay: count        }).success(function(data) {
                     $("div").append(data);        }));    }    return deferreds;}$(function() {
             $("a").click(function() {
                 var deferreds = getSomeDeferredStuff();        $.when(deferreds).done(function() {
                     $("div").append("
All done!
");        });    });});

I want "All done!" to appear after all of the deferred tasks have completed, but $.when() doesn't appear to know how to handle an array of Deferred objects. "All done!" is happening first because the array is not a Deferred object, so jQuery goes ahead and assumes it's just done.

I know one could pass the objects into the function like $.when(deferred1, deferred2, ..., deferredX) but it's unknown how many Deferred objects there will be at execution in the actual problem I'm trying to solve.

$.when.apply($, my_array);