I've searched all over the internet and cannot find a solution please help!
directive('menu',function(){
return{
link : function(scope,element,attrs){
scope.foo = function(){
alert('test!');
}
},
controller : function($scope){
$scope.foo();
}
}
});
Delay the call to foo() using $evalAsync():
controller : function($scope){
$scope.$evalAsync(function() {
$scope.foo();
console.log($scope);
});
}
fiddle
You could also use $timeout() instead of $evalAsync(). Both allow the link function to execute first.
As Ye Liu said, your controller calls your directive's compile and then link functions.
From the angular directive doc (http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/directive):
The controller is instantiated before the pre-linking phase
The controller will be within the scope of your app, and once the post-link function finishes, your directive will be a child of this scope. Consider that the link function's purpose is to bind model data to your template and set watches for bound variables, not to create a discreet 'directive object'.
If you are trying to set the foo function inside of the link function in order to access directive scope variables, take a look at directive delegate functions and bound variables in the "scope:" directive attribute. The angular directive tutorial gives a somewhat obtuse version of this as its final example ("zippy"), and Angularjs Directive Delegate not firing through intermediary handler gives an example of a delegate function you can invoke from your template itself.
Related
It is clear that a method should be set to scope in order to be visible or available for the view (in html) or in a directive or in any other place where the method should be accessed, so that the method can be accessed through the $scope. My question is to know whether $scope is always necessary or a good practice to use when a method is defined. For instance, following are different method declarations:
Scenario 1. $scope.myMethod = function(){};
Scenario 2. var myMethod= function(){};
if 'myMethod' is only used in one controller, is it required to set it to the $scope? What are the advantages or why scenario 1 or 2 is good ?
What if someone has declared it as $scope.myMethod = function(){} ? is it not good or an unnecessary load to the $scope ? What can be the best practice?
NB: I don't need to make any poll here, please let me know any pros and cons
You mainly use the first scenario for things like binding click events. If you will only call the myMethod you don't really need to define it in scope.
For example following will need the first definition:
<button ng-click="myMethod()">My Button</button>
But following can use the second:
angular.module('myCtrl', [])
.controller('myController', function($scope) {
var myMethod = function (text) {alert(text)};
$scope.mySecondMethod = function () { myMethod('second'); }
$scope.myThirdMethod = function () { myMethod('third'); }
In second case you can use mySecondMethod and myThirdMethod in event binding.
Scenario 1. $scope.myMethod = function(){};
Scenario 2. var myMethod= function(){};
Scope is the glue between the controller and the view. If you really
need any variable and methods for the current view, then this should
be added to the scope variable. Please see the controller as property
if you don't want to add the methods to scope.
Scenario 1
If you declare a method using the scope, then this will be available/accessed from the view.
Scenario 2
If you really don't need this method to be accessed from the view, then you can remove this method from the scope.
You need $scope to define a method only if you are calling that function from your html code.
You can use this or some_names also instead of $scope.
$scope is just to mean that the function's (mehtod's) scope is inside that controller function and can be accessible from the html code that written inside the controller
If the function is calling inside the javascript (controller) only, then use normal definition
function myMethod(){}
OR
var myMethod = function(){}
Declaring a method or variable as $scope variable is only for accessing from DOM. If you are creating a new variable in $scope. It just adding that variable to the clousure of $scope as $scope: {first, seccond, third}
When ever you are calling a $scope function that just returns from the closure. There is not much load to the $scope I guess
Scope is the glue between application controller and the view. During
the template linking phase the directives set up $watch expressions on
the scope. The $watch allows the directives to be notified of property
changes, which allows the directive to render the updated value to the
DOM.
Both controllers and directives have reference to the scope, but not
to each other. This arrangement isolates the controller from the
directive as well as from the DOM. This is an important point since it
makes the controllers view agnostic, which greatly improves the
testing story of the applications.
From the documentation
I have an Angular app where I'm using ui-grid. I want to have a custom action on a cell of the grid that calls a method from my app. So basically, this means calling a method that's somewhere up in the parent hierarchy, from a directive.
This would be achieved by calling something like: $scope.$parent.$parent.$parent.$parent.foo(). But that doesn't seem too nice.
One option would be to create a recursive function that goes up the ancestry of the $scope. That's nicer, but still seems a bit weird.
Also... Is it good practice to try to achieve something like this?
You're correct that $parent.$parent.$parent is definitely not a good practice.
If the method you're calling is another directive, you can require that directive in your child directive and then, the parentDirective's controller function will be injected as the fourth parameter to your link function:
In your DDO:
return {
require : '^parentDirective',
restrict : 'E',
link : function (scope, elem, attrs, parentDirectiveController) {}
}
If what you're trying to call is on a factory/service, you can inject that factory/service into your directive, although this sometimes is a code smell, depending on what you're trying to inject.
Finally, another way to do it is to use event propagation. From your directive, you can use $scope.$emit to send information up to parent controllers:
From the directive:
$scope.$emit('directiveDidStuff', {
data : 'blah'
});
In the parent controller:
$scope.$on('directiveDidStuff', function (evt, params) {
this.data = params.data; // equals blah
});
You can achieve the same by using "&" through one of the scope variable in directive.Like this, you can bind your event to the controller method and from the method, you could do your desired things or if the original business logic which you wants to achieve on onClick of the grid is used across many modules than you can bisect it in service and make it reusable and call the service from the event method. Let me know if you do have any doubts with the approach.
Key Code of example:
Html
<my-component attribute-foo="{{foo}}" binding-foo="foo" isolated-expression- foo="updateFoo(newFoo)" >
Directive
var myModule = angular.module('myModule', [])
.directive('myComponent', function () {
return {
restrict:'E',
scope:{
/* NOTE: Normally I would set my attributes and bindings
to be the same name but I wanted to delineate between
parent and isolated scope. */
isolatedAttributeFoo:'#attributeFoo',
isolatedBindingFoo:'=bindingFoo',
isolatedExpressionFoo:'&'
}
};
})
I am trying to understand $parse, based on the documentation. But I am having trouble to get my test code working. Am I using $parse service the right way?
The main part of the code is:
app.directive('try', function($parse) {
return {
restrict: 'E',
scope: {
sayHello: "&hello"
},
transclude: true,
template: "<div style='background:gray;color:white'>Hello I am try: <span ng-transclude></span><div>",
link: function($scope, $elem, $attr) {
var getter = $parse($attr.sayHello);
// var setter = getter.assign;
$elem.on('click', function() {
getter($scope);
$scope.$apply();
});
}
};
});
See my code at: http://plnkr.co/edit/lwV5sHGoCf2HtQa3DaVI
I haven't used the $parse method, but this code achives what you are looking for:
http://plnkr.co/edit/AVvxLR4RcmWhLo8eqYyd?p=preview
As far as I can tell, the $parse service is intended to be used outside of an isolate scope.
When you have an isolate scope, like in your directive, you can obtain a reference to the parent scope's function using the 'sayHello': '&' as proposed in Shai's answer. The $parse service might still work as expected even with an isolate scope, if you are able to pass in the parent scope instead of the directive's scope when calling getter($scope), but I haven't tested that.
Edit: This is indeed the case - using getter($scope.$parent) works fine. When an isolate scope is used in your directive, the $scope variable no longer refers to the correct context for the getter function returned by the $parse service. Access the correct one by using $scope.$parent.
However, if you are avoiding an isolate scope, your approach works well. Try removing the scope: { ... } section out of your directive definition entirely and you'll see it works fine. This is handy if you are creating a directive for event binding that might be applied to an element in conjunction with another directive that has an isolate scope, say a dragenter directive (which isn't provided by Angular). You couldn't use Shai's method in that case, since the isolate scopes would collide and you'd get an error, but you could use the $parse service.
Here's an updated plunker with the scope removed from the directive definition: http://plnkr.co/edit/6jIjc8lAK9yjYnwDuHYZ
I have a form directive that uses a specified callback attribute with an isolate scope:
scope: { callback: '&' }
It sits inside an ng-repeat so the expression I pass in includes the id of the object as an argument to the callback function:
<directive ng-repeat = "item in stuff" callback = "callback(item.id)"/>
When I've finished with the directive, it calls $scope.callback() from its controller function. For most cases this is fine, and it's all I want to do, but sometimes I'd like to add another argument from inside the directive itself.
Is there an angular expression that would allow this: $scope.callback(arg2), resulting in callback being called with arguments = [item.id, arg2]?
If not, what is the neatest way to do this?
I've found that this works:
<directive
ng-repeat = "item in stuff"
callback = "callback"
callback-arg="item.id"/>
With
scope { callback: '=', callbackArg: '=' }
and the directive calling
$scope.callback.apply(null, [$scope.callbackArg].concat([arg2, arg3]) );
But I don't think it's particularly neat and it involves puting extra stuff in the isolate scope.
Is there a better way?
Plunker playground here (have the console open).
If you declare your callback as mentioned by #lex82 like
callback = "callback(item.id, arg2)"
You can call the callback method in the directive scope with object map and it would do the binding correctly. Like
scope.callback({arg2:"some value"});
without requiring for $parse. See my fiddle(console log) http://jsfiddle.net/k7czc/2/
Update: There is a small example of this in the documentation:
& or &attr - provides a way to execute an expression in the context of
the parent scope. If no attr name is specified then the attribute name
is assumed to be the same as the local name. Given and widget definition of scope: {
localFn:'&myAttr' }, then isolate scope property localFn will point to
a function wrapper for the count = count + value expression. Often
it's desirable to pass data from the isolated scope via an expression
and to the parent scope, this can be done by passing a map of local
variable names and values into the expression wrapper fn. For example,
if the expression is increment(amount) then we can specify the amount
value by calling the localFn as localFn({amount: 22}).
Nothing wrong with the other answers, but I use the following technique when passing functions in a directive attribute.
Leave off the parenthesis when including the directive in your html:
<my-directive callback="someFunction" />
Then "unwrap" the function in your directive's link or controller. here is an example:
app.directive("myDirective", function() {
return {
restrict: "E",
scope: {
callback: "&"
},
template: "<div ng-click='callback(data)'></div>", // call function this way...
link: function(scope, element, attrs) {
// unwrap the function
scope.callback = scope.callback();
scope.data = "data from somewhere";
element.bind("click",function() {
scope.$apply(function() {
callback(data); // ...or this way
});
});
}
}
}]);
The "unwrapping" step allows the function to be called using a more natural syntax. It also ensures that the directive works properly even when nested within other directives that may pass the function. If you did not do the unwrapping, then if you have a scenario like this:
<outer-directive callback="someFunction" >
<middle-directive callback="callback" >
<inner-directive callback="callback" />
</middle-directive>
</outer-directive>
Then you would end up with something like this in your inner-directive:
callback()()()(data);
Which would fail in other nesting scenarios.
I adapted this technique from an excellent article by Dan Wahlin at http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/creating-custom-angularjs-directives-part-3-isolate-scope-and-function-parameters
I added the unwrapping step to make calling the function more natural and to solve for the nesting issue which I had encountered in a project.
In directive (myDirective):
...
directive.scope = {
boundFunction: '&',
model: '=',
};
...
return directive;
In directive template:
<div
data-ng-repeat="item in model"
data-ng-click='boundFunction({param: item})'>
{{item.myValue}}
</div>
In source:
<my-directive
model='myData'
bound-function='myFunction(param)'>
</my-directive>
...where myFunction is defined in the controller.
Note that param in the directive template binds neatly to param in the source, and is set to item.
To call from within the link property of a directive ("inside" of it), use a very similar approach:
...
directive.link = function(isolatedScope) {
isolatedScope.boundFunction({param: "foo"});
};
...
return directive;
Yes, there is a better way: You can use the $parse service in your directive to evaluate an expression in the context of the parent scope while binding certain identifiers in the expression to values visible only inside your directive:
$parse(attributes.callback)(scope.$parent, { arg2: yourSecondArgument });
Add this line to the link function of the directive where you can access the directive's attributes.
Your callback attribute may then be set like callback = "callback(item.id, arg2)" because arg2 is bound to yourSecondArgument by the $parse service inside the directive. Directives like ng-click let you access the click event via the $event identifier inside the expression passed to the directive by using exactly this mechanism.
Note that you do not have to make callback a member of your isolated scope with this solution.
For me following worked:
in directive declare it like this:
.directive('myDirective', function() {
return {
restrict: 'E',
replace: true,
scope: {
myFunction: '=',
},
templateUrl: 'myDirective.html'
};
})
In directive template use it in following way:
<select ng-change="myFunction(selectedAmount)">
And then when you use the directive, pass the function like this:
<data-my-directive
data-my-function="setSelectedAmount">
</data-my-directive>
You pass the function by its declaration and it is called from directive and parameters are populated.
I am trying to build generic code as much as possible.
So I'm having 2 directives, one nested inside the other while I want the nested directive to call a method on the main controller $scope.
But instead it requests the method on the parent directive, I want to know how to execute a method against the main controller scope instead of the parent directive.
Here is a sample code for my issue
My HTML should look something like this:
<div ng-controller='mainctrl'>
<div validator>
<div datepicker select-event='datepickerSelected()'/>
</div>
</div>
Javascript:
var app = angular.module("app",[]);
var mainctrl = function($scope){
$scope.datepickerSelected = function(){
//I WANT TO ACCESS THIS METHOD
}
}
app.directive("validator",function(){
return {
scope : {
//the datepicker directive requests a datepickerSelected() method on this scope
//while I want it to access the mainctrl scope
}
link: function(scope){
//some code
}
}
});
app.directive("datepicker", function(){
return{
scope: {
selectEvent: '&'
}
link: function(scope, elem){
//example code
$(elem).click(scope.selectEvent); //want this to access mainctrl instead validator directive
}
}
});
Simply remove the validator directive's scope property, thus eliminating its isolated scope. That means that validator will have the same scope that it is nested in (your controller) and datepicker will use that scope.
Another option if you want both to have isolated scopes (doesn't sound like you do) is to pass the function through to "validator's" scope.