It seems that getting an element in AngularJS is a bad idea, i.e. doing something like:
$('.myElement')
in say, a controller is not an angular way of doing things.
Now my question is, how should I get something in angular?
Right now, what I'm doing (and is an accepted way of doing it) is by watching a variable, and my directive does something based on it.
scope.$watch('varToWatch', function (varToWatch) {
if(attrs.id == varToWatch)
{
//Run my Directive specific code
}
});
However, while this particular design works for most cases, watch is an expensive operation, and having lots of directives watching can really slow down your application.
TL:DR - What is an angular way of getting a directive based on a variable on the directive? (like the one above)?
If you want to get/set values you don't need to fetch the element using jQuery. Angular data binding is the way to do it.
directives is the way to go if you want to do animations or any kind of element attributes and DOM manipulation.
Your code is basically right; the directive should watch something in the $scope and perform it's logic when that thing changes. Yes, watch statements are expensive, and that is a problem once your number of watches start to approach ~2000.
Looking at your code though, I see one problem:
The variable $scope.varToWatch references an id in the template.
When this variable changes, you want something to happen to the element which has this id.
The problem here is in the first point: The controller should know nothing about the DOM, including the id of any element. You should find another way to handle this, for example:
<div my-directive="one"> ... </div>
<div my-directive="two"> ... </div>
<div my-directive="three"> ... </div>
...etc
And in your directive:
scope.$watch('varToWatch', function (varToWatch) {
if(attrs.myDirective == varToWatch)
{
// Run my Directive specific code
}
});
You are very vague as to what you're trying to achieve, but I'll try to answer in context of your last comment.
I have a lot of the same directives (therefore the code will run on all of them), but I need to get only one directive from the lot.
You talk a lot about getting the right element. The directive element is passed to the link function in the directive. If you are not using this element (or children of it) directly, but rather trying to search for the element you want somehow, you are most likely approaching the problem the wrong way.
There are several ways to solve this, I'm sure. If you're thinking about animations, there is already support for that in Angular, so please don't try reinvent the wheel yourself. For other logic, here are two suggestions:
Secondary directive
If the logic you want to apply to this directive is generic, i.e. it could be applied to other directives in your application, you could create a new directive which works together with directives. You can set prioritization in directive in order to control which directive is executed first.
<main-directive ... helper-directive="{{condition_for_applying_logic}}"></main-directive>
jsFiddle example
Expanding main directive
If the logic is tightly coupled to this directive, you can just create a new attribute, either dynamic or static, and bind to it in the directive. Instead of checking 'attrs.id == varToWatch', you check if $scope.apply-logic === 'true' and apply the logic then.
<main-directive ...></main-directive> <!-- Not applied here -->
<main-directive apply-logic="true" ...></main-directive> <!-- Applied here -->
<main-directive apply-logic="{{some.varOnScope}}"...></main-directive> <!-- Conditional -->
Please comment if something is unclear.
Related
I have a simple DOM hierarchy and I want to grab a specific set of elements (I want all the canvas elements). This is the entire template for this directive:
<div id='charts-container'>
<div class='chart-wrapper' ng-repeat='chart in getNumberOfCharts() track by $index'>
<canvas id="{{'exam-chart-' + $index}}" class='chart-canvas'></canvas>
</div>
</div>
I want to create a list with all the canvas within the #charts-container element, but I just can't. This is what I'm trying to do inside the link function:
link: function (scope, element, attributes, controller) {
var look = element.find('#chart-canvas');
$log.debug(look);
}
And then I get this element, but I don't know how to get all the chart-wrapper elements from here.
I tried doing look.context.children, it returned an empty list, but at the same time showed me what I wanted as if the list were populated, here is an image. If I try to access any index of this list, it returns undefined (which is fine, because it's an empty list. But why the console is showing me these values?)
What is the best way to achieve this? To get all the canvas elements in this template? (there are 15 of them). Thanks!
--- UPDATE ---
I realized that if I remove the ng-repeat attribute I'm using in the template, it works! But I need the ng-repeat...
element.find('.chart-canvas') manage to get the canvas element, but only if there are no ng-repeat attribute.
Is this a common issue when using ng-repeat. Is there any special treatment when falling in this case?
I found a solution in this thread.
Apparently I was trying to access DOM that hasn't been rendered yet. So, wrapping my query for the canvas with
$timeout(function() {
var canvasList = element.find('.chart-canvas');
}, 0);
solved the issue, since using $timeout will wait until all $digest cycles are complete.
I would like to get to know better how the rendering pipeline works in AngularJS, to avoid falling in issues of this kind. If anyone has a link to a thread or explanation of this, it would be much appreciated.
I think it should be element.find('.chart-canvas') instead of element.find('#chart-canvas'). Does it work with that change ?
Hi please explain reason for following three scenarios as I am unable to know why is this happening -
1)
<div ng-controller="myctrl">
<p>something for DOM manipulation</p>
</div>
2)in route I write
('someroute',{
templateUrl : "mytemplate",
controller : "myctrl"
});
mytemplate:
<div>
<p>something for dom manipulation</p>
</div>
3)
<div ng-include="mytemplate" ng-controller="myctrl"></div>
with template being same as above
The controllers in all the above scenarios are same, and in all of them I am just trying to select p tag of DOM by writing angular.element('p'). But this seems inconsistent. It works very well in 2nd scenario, it never works in 3rd scenario and I am not sure about 1st sccenario. Can someone explain which method is best for dom selection/manipulation, as I have to add a class to this 'p' tag on hover.
I am not understanding which gets initialized first- controller or partial?
Manipulating DOM inside controllers is discouraged. Quote from Best Practice - Dom Manipulations:
Dom Manipulations should not exist in controllers, services or anywhere else but in directives.
If you only need to style elements on hover, using the p:hover CSS selector would be enough without touching the DOM. ng-class and ng-mouseover can help you if you really want the class.
For more complex scenarios, you may want to write your own directive. You can check the article above for a guide to do that.
Load order from the first case: HTML first. Directives like ngController are loaded after parsing the HTML. Therefore the HTML already exists when the controller is loaded.
Load order for the second case: I'm not sure about it. You may check documentation for ngRoute or uiRouter depending on the router you are using.
Execution order for the third case: Controller first. The directive ngController have higher priority than the ngInclude directive. Therefore, the controller is loaded first.
Quote from ngController documentation :
This directive executes at priority level 500.
Quote from ngInclude documentation :
This directive executes at priority level 400.
I have been developing an advanced web-based GUI in AngularJS. Recently, I decided to use the call document.getElementsByClassName() (I hate using element collecting methods, but here I had to use one) and my boss flipped his lid for accessing the document element. He says that I "need to use only Angular calls for everything", even for element collection! Is there an "Angular way" to collect elements by class name? If so, which way is better to use within the Angular framework? Please provide reasons why. Thanks!
UPDATE: Why I need to use an element collector...
So, I really wish I didn't have to do this, but I do...
I am using a third-party directive that I found online called the Bootstrap DateTimePicker. Its pretty cool and very nice looking, yet it might have a bug...
First, I make a directive bound to an attribute, stating that the element I pass in is meant to be a "DateTimePicker". I then pass that element to the DateTimePicker function.
When invoked, this function creates a new div with absolute positioning and appends it to the body of the page.
Now, I open a dialog in my GUI that has a table in it. On each row of the table, I have two DateTimePickers: one for end-date and one for start-date.
My problem is that, once I leave my screen and the elements which the DateTimePickers were bound to are destroyed, the DateTimePickers still remain! If I open the dialog box again, it creates a ton more of these divs as well!
Until I could determine a true solution to this issue, I decided to use the element collector as a temporary quick-fix. I grab all of the elements with the datetimepicker class and perform a:
elem[i].parentNode.removeChild(elem[i]);
Not having your exact use case but knowing that you are attempting to aggregate elements by class name in your controller makes me agree with you boss. Think of the controller as an object which exposes data and and services to your declarative html page. The data is bound into the markup for presentation and possible modification. THe services are usually wrapped in functions on your controller which are then tied to event handling directives like ng-click or ng-change. These services should operate exclusively on your data and never touch the DOM. If you need to modify a DOM element in your declarative markup then that should be done through directives like ng-class etc.
In any case, It would be useful to know what you are trying to accomplish so as to give you a better idea of the "angular way" to approach the problem.
Well, I have my answer. This does not solve the question "Grab all elements with a certain class name without touching the document element" yet it does solve my problem and eliminates my need to use document.getElementsByClassName.
First of all, it turns out that every element using the DateTimePicker directive have an element.datetimepicker("remove") function.
I use a directive for each DateTimePicker:
components.directive('DateTimePicker', function() {
// Requires bootstrap-datetimestamp.js
return {
restrict: 'E',
replace: true,
scope: {
dateTimeField: '='
},
template:
'<div>' +
'<input type="text" readonly data-date-format="yyyy-mm-ddThh:ii:ssZ" data-date-time required/>'+
'</div>',
link: function(scope, element, attrs, ngModel)
{
var input = element.find('input');
input.
datetimepicker(
{
//stuff
})
.on('changeDate', function(ev)
{
//more stuff
});
...
Directive drastically shortened for the sake of your eyeballs...
I then need to remove the DateTimePicker and the input it is bound to from the DOM on destruction of the dialog box that the input is a child of. To do so, I added this to my directive:
scope.$on("$destroy",function handleDestroyEvent()
{
input.datetimepicker("remove");
input = null;
});
And it works! The DateTimePicker gets removed, the DateTimePicker's handles to the input are cleaned up, and I've marked my input for the GC! WooHoo! Thanks everybody!
If you include jQuery in your project before AngularJS, Angular will use jQuery instead of jqLite for the angular.element function. This means you should be able to use jQuery's selectors for finding / referencing DOM elements.
I'm creating a custom Angular directive for a slide in menu which needs to watch a couple of attributes and one of those attributes needs to be two way bound to the main controller scope (sometimes). However, sometimes the attribute will not be added by the developer so it needs to be added automatically and set to the default (false). So, the directive can be used like this.
<slide-menu position="right" is-open="menuIsOpen"></slide-menu>
or like this:
<slide-menu></slide-menu>
When used the first way the main controller will be able to open and close the menu by changing the value of the boolean $scope.menuIsOpen.
When used without supplying the is-open attribute it should default to false and is obviously used internally and by a child toggle directive.
An additional complication is that whether the attribute is supplied by the developer or not it should exist in the DOM. so in the second example above the directive would set itself to false by default and add the attribute is-open="false" to the DOM?
The reason for requiring is-open="false/true" in the DOM at all times is that the menu is actually operated using CSS tansitions which use the following selector:
slide-menu[is-active="true"]{
// Slide the menu in using transforms/transitions
}
There is a jsfiddle here which shows how far I have got.
http://jsfiddle.net/jonhobbs/gEPvE/
Obviously it doesn't work, but it shows how I have tried to set a default and how I have tried to use # and & on the isolated scope for a one time binding (the menu position) and a 2 way bound expression for the is-open variable.
I'm clearly a long way from achieving what I need but any advice would really be appreciated.
Have a look at this fiddle http://jsfiddle.net/gEPvE/38/
I took the one you started and updated it to act like you specified.
You can make a two way binding value optional by adding a ? on the scope definition.
Like this
{
scope: {
'isOpen':'=?'
}
}
Now the is-open attribute is optional.
Then you can set the default value in the directive controller, like you had started to do.
Next, in order to synchronize the DOM attribute with the scope value you can use $watch.
$scope.$watch('isOpen', function(val) {
$element.attr('is-open', val);
});
Finally, I changed the second 'slideMenuToggle' directive to wrap/transclude its element in order to add an ng-click handler. This is mainly to avoid any nastiness with calling $scope.$apply yourself.
Let me know if that works for you.
EDIT
Answering your question in the comment, you can pass a value directly without having it be bound to the scope, you just need to wrap the value in quotes.
For example
<div ng-controller='ctrl'>
<hello world='imOnScope'></hello>
</div>
Assuming 'hello' is a directive with a scope of 'world': '=?' then angular will assign a reference to the parent scope's 'imOnScope' object to the directive's $scope.world member, allowing a two way binding scenario.
To just provide a value directly you may do something like this
<div ng-controller="ctrl">
<hello world="'directValue'"></hello>
</div>
In this scenario angular will just assign 'directValue' to the directive's $scope.world member.
You need to add ngTouch to your module.
var app = angular.module('app', ['ngTouch']);
And add this script:
http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.2.1/angular-touch.js
The reason for requiring is-open="false/true" in the DOM at all times
is that the menu is actually operated using CSS tansitions which use
the following selector
Forcing directive attributes to be appropriate for css selectors is terrible idea. As you correctly stated, they are for developers. So add a class to the element dynamically.
It seems that you're misusing &, it would be ok to set up a callback, but since you don't do this, in its current state you can end up with one-way # with confidence.
I guess it can be something like this (just added ngTouch and ng-controller for parent scope).
You could replace
$scope.watch('isOpen', function () {
$element.toggleClass('opened', $scope.isOpen);
});
with
$scope.watch('isOpen', function () {
$attrs.isOpen = !!$scope.isOpen;
});
and get the behaviour you're asking for, easy as that. Ok, it is boolean now, and it reflects the scope, and you can use [is-open=true] selector. But guess what will happen with your binding? Broken. Fortunately, you can do
$scope.watch('isOpen', function () {
$element.attr('is-open', !!$scope.isOpen);
});
instead. Voila, we tricked Angular because it doesn't look after jqlite. But what will will happen with the binding when the directive will be re-compiled for any reason? Again, isOpen's binding is non-existing 'true' or 'false' scope variable. Broken.
I want to put a variable on a div and to be applied and inherited by all the dojo widgets under this div.
Is this feasible ?
For example
<div shaper="Contextual">
<textarea ..../>
<select multiple data-dojo-type="dijit/form/MultiSelect">
....
</div>
I want the functionality supported by the shaper to be applied to all the widgets included in the div.
p.s.: "shaper" is a custom module created to do numeric shaping for Arabic numbers.
It's possible, but not out of the box.
You can write something like this:
require(["dojo/query", "dojo/domReady!"], function(query) {
query("[shaper]").forEach(function(shaper) {
});
});
This will query all elements with a shaper attribute and loop over it. Inside the loop, you will have to retrieve the value of the shaper attribute (for example Contextual), you can do that with the getAttribute() function, for example:
var shaperModule = shaper.getAttribute("shaper");
Now you have the name of the module to load, so you can write something like this inside the loop:
require([shaperModule], function(shaperModule) {
});
This will use AMD to retrieve the Contextual module. Now all that's left is to include the shaper functionality into all widgets inside your <div>.
First of all, with dijit/registry::findWidgets() you can retrieve all widgets inside a specific DOM node, you can use this to retrieve your dijit/form/MultiSelect widget in this case:
registry.findWidgets(shaper);
Then you can loop over the array of widgets that are found and use dojo/_base/lang::mixin() to extend an object with the contents of another object, for example:
registry.findWidgets(shaper).forEach(function(widget) {
lang.mixin(widget, shaperModule);
});
For example: http://jsfiddle.net/zLv7cvzt/
Though this might not work entirely (what if the module does not exist or what about widgets inside widgets, which dijit/registry::byId() does not detect), it does give you an idea of how to achieve it.
To answer your second question, if it's feasible or not, I would say that it depends. If you extend a widget with another widget like this, it could really end up with really weird things, because all widgets extend from dijit/_WidgetBase, which provides the widget lifecycle, you could mix both widgets their lifecycle.
Also, if you end up doing this and you get an error, it will be really hard to debug this if you're not familiar with the custom code.