AngularJS - dynamically remove directive from element - javascript

What is the proper way to dynamically add or remove directive from compiled and linked element?
I have a page that has bunch of inputs there (the list is pretty long, so i want to come up with a general solution). What i want to do is to disable all the inputs if specific flag set. I can do this by using jQuery's element.prop('disabled', true).
The problem of such approach is that if any of inputs have ng-disabled or ng-enabled directives attached, then on any their expression modification they will override previously set 'disabled' property. But I want them to not override my global flag.
I came up with the solution to add another bunch of watchers for ng-disabled or ng-enabled expression, but it seems to be not the best approach.
What I want to do, is to remove most of directives attached to the element and set appropriate attributes myself. But if I recompile and relink the element, and then replace it in the document, then I will get a memory leak, as the old element will be de-attached from the DOM document tree, and will remain in memory. I cannot destroy element's scope either, because those elements basically use whole page's main scope.

You can try something like
<div ng-show="someBoolean" >Some text or nested element</div>
or instead of "someBoolean" you can attach a function that resolves to a boolean. To set your boolean you could attach a ng-click to your input that updates your model/boolean value
<button type="button" ng-click="setBoolean()">Some text or nested element </button>
Because of angulars two way data binding the ng-show will be updated upon completion of the next digest cycle

Related

Ng-click - how to unit test for behaviour

When having an angular directive that inside its template has a button with ng-click attribute, should I test the effect of actual action taken (clicking) or of, an attached to ng-click attribute, function call?
In other words, for a directive, that has a template like this:
<div>
<button ng-click="game.start()">start</button>
</div>
should I test what clicking does or what game.start function does?
I am aware that later the function game.start can be changed for a different one. Also, ng-click can be removed and click event can be caught in a different way.
Unit testing with triggerHandler('click') is tempting but directive's template can also change. That would mean that I need some "proven" access to DOM nodes, namely through id attributes.
Should I attach id attributes on nodes just for unit testing sake or should I take a different aproach to the problem?
In the case of a directive I usually go through the dom to click the element. in your case here:
it("performs some action when clicked", function() {
element.find("button").click();
assert(something);
});
Calling the handler directly will get you a passing test even if you forget to add the ng-click directive, which is not what I usually want. It also gives you the freedom to rename the handler method without having to adjust the test, thus making it a little less brittle.
If the template is getting very complex and you are tempted to add ids just for testings sake, you might want to consider breaking the directive into multiple ones.

Angular custom directive - two way binding which always sets attribute to true or false

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.

jQuery hide(), show() or html()

I have a
<div id="content">
</div>
and three js variables that store different html: content1, content2 and content3.
By user interactions, the content of mentioned above div changes to one of that that stored in js variables.
What is preferable either to directly set div content to what I need by user interaction:
$("#content").html(content2);
or to change div structure to:
<div id="content">
<div id="c1">
// value of content1 variable here
</div>
<div id="c2">
// value of content2 variable here
</div>
<div id="c3">
// value of content3 variable here
</div>
</div>
And doing hide() and show() to that inner blocks, i.e when I want content2 to be shown:
$("#c1").hide();
$("#c2").show();
$("#c3").hide();
?
I'd say hiding & showing divs.
It's less intensive, and if the content inside the javascript variables happens to contain elements that you'll bind to, you won't have to rebind everytime you refresh the content, and if you wanted to have some sort of animation between the different content, multiple divs also allows that.
As a side note, using jQuery it's less code to do something like
$("#c2").show().siblings().hide();
The two aren't really all-that comparable since they do different things. They may well give a similar perception but what's happening isn't the same in terms of markup. In fact, it's not uncommon to see .html('Something').show() chained together.
Passing a string to .html() replaces the content of the selected element, it does nothing to affect the element itself.
Calling .show() or .hide() only affects the element itself - all the descendants remain exactly the same, they just can't be seen because their parent is not being displayed.
By using .html() you are replacing everything inside your element. All references to these descending elements will become undefined and direct (non-delegated) event listeners will also be lost.
.hide() and .show() do exactly what they say. The data inside your element is still preserved, the event handlers still in place, it's all just 'hidden' by way of display: none.
If the content dynamically changes, without page-load, use .html(), if not, .show() and .hide() are more appropriate.
For the ease of use and shorter more cleaner looking code, setting the content through HTML is the right option!
Think of it as what you're trying to do, 1 DIV => Can contain 3 different contents, you can manipulate it through JS.
So, in your first solution, you actually have one div and manipulating it through JS:
$("#content").html(content1);
$("#content").html(content2);
$("#content").html(content3);
Whereas, in the second solution, you are actually using 4 divs for the same functionality! So definitely, if you can do something with 1 div. That's the preferred way.
They both are taking equal lines for JS, but with the second approach, your HTML will contain a lot more code considering your contents are large.
I think that the best solution is to store the different contents into three variables and then assign to the div the choosen one with
$("#content").html(content2);
In this way you have three less nodes on your DOM tree
There isn't that much difference between the two options. One factor that might affect this is the actual size of the content you are changing. If the content is relatively small then it really doesn't matter which way you choose.
Another thing to consider is how available the three versions of the content variable is. If you have to fetch this HTML content each time you load it then it might make sense to pre-populate the content before you display it to your users so as to save the time it takes to load it. Then just show/hide the appropriate content.

Getting an Element in AngularJS

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.

Genuinely stop a element from binding - unbind an element - AngularJS

I'm trying to find out how I can stop a DOM element from binding data from the scope in angular.
I know that you could do this with if statements and all, but is there a genuine & permanent way to stop binding a element in angular but keep the content that was added?
So say i have this
<div ng-bind=​"content" class=​"ng-binding">​Welcome​</div>​
And i change the model so that the div changes to this.
<div ng-bind=​"content" class=​"ng-binding">​Welcome​ World</div>​
Then I click the button that will unbind it, so if I change the model to 'Welcome Universe', I wan't the <div> to be the same as before. This
<div ng-bind=​"content" class=​"ng-binding">​Welcome​ World</div>​
I know there are many other ways to do this, but i don't know any way to genuinely unbind the element, without cloning it and replacing the old one looping through the attributes and text..ect
Demo thing: http://jsfiddle.net/a9tZY/
So, by doing this, it shouldn't affect the model or other elements that are binding to that model.
Long story short, Tell Angular to leave the element alone forever.
UPDATE
The way to do this is to create a new scope on the element with a directive like so.
yourModule.directive('unbindable', function(){
return { scope: true };
});
And apply it to your element like so
<div unbindable id="yourId"></div>
Then to unbind this element from any updates you do this.
angular.element( document.getElementById('yourId') ).scope().$destroy();
Done, here's a demo.
Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/KQD6H/
So this creates a new scope on the element and only works because all scopes inherit all data from their parent scopes. so the scope is basically the same as the parent scope, but allows you to destroy the scope without affecting the parent scope. Because this element was given it's own scope, when you destroy it it doesn't get the parent scope back like all of the other elements, if that makes sense 0.o
Everything below this line was my original answer,I'll leave it here incase someone prefers this way
I have managed to achieve this genuinely with a unbindable directive.
When you have the unbinable directive set up on the element all that is required to unbind the element is this.
yourElement.attr('unbind', 'true'); // Ref 1
$scope.$broadcast('unbind'); // Ref 2
Here is the directive.
app.directive('unbindable', function(){
return {
scope: true, // This is what lets us do the magic.
controller: function( $scope, $element){
$scope.$on('unbind', function(){ // Ref 3
if($element.attr('unbind') === 'true'){ // Ref 4
window.setTimeout(function(){ $scope.$destroy() }, 0);//Ref 5
}
});
}
}
});
and you set your element up like this.
<h1 unbindable></h1>
So whenever you add the unbind="true" attribute to the h1 and broadcast unbind the element will be unbind-ed
REF-1: Add the unbind true attribute to the element so that the directive knows what element you are unbinding.
REF-2: Broadcast the unbind event across the scopes so that the directive knows that you want to unbind a element - Make sure you add the attribute first. --- Depending on your app layout, you might need to use $rootScope.$broadcast
REF-3: When the unbind event is broadcasted
REF-4: If the element associated with the directive has a true unbind attribute
REF-5: Then destroy the scope made by the directive. We have to use setTimeout because I think angular tries to do something after the $on event and we get a error, so using setTimeout will prevent that error. Although it fires instantly.
This works on multiple elements, here is a nice demo.
Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/wzAXu/2/
This one got me curious, so I did some poking around. At first I tried the "unbind()" method suggested in the other answer, but that only worked with removing event handlers from the element when what you're actually trying to do is remove the angular scope from the element. There may be some neater hidden function in Angular to do this, but this works just fine too:
angular.element(document.getElementById('txtElem')).scope().$destroy();
This retains the model (and updates anything else still bound to it), but removes the binding from the element. Also, in your example above, there is no binding to remove because you aren't binding to any element, just displaying the model expression inline. My example shows this in action: http://jsfiddle.net/3jQMx/1/
You can call the unbind method that stops listening to the element where the ng-model attribute is present. See fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/jexgF/
angular.element(document.getElementById('txtElem')).unbind()
unbind removes all event listeners, so whenever any changes are made, it wont listen for those and hence not go through the angular loop. I have also assumed that you are not using jQuery, but if you are, you can use a better selector than document.getElementById

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