Adding partial views and controller in angular app - angularjs

I am in the process of optimizing the performance of Angular app. I am using ng-include to add partial views and its controllers. Following is the code snippet
<!--show term rule view-->
<div id="showTermRule" ng-controller="TermRuleController as term" ng-if="showTermRule">
<div data-ng-include src="'/Relevancy/termRule/termRule.html'" ng-if="!isPublsihed"></div>
<div data-ng-include src="'/Relevancy/termRule/publishedTermRule.html'" ng-if="isPublsihed"></div>
</div>
<!--show function rule view-->
<div id="showFunctionRule" ng-controller="expressionBuilderController" ng-if="showFunctionRule">
<div data-ng-include src="'/Relevancy/functionRule/functionRule.html'" ng-if="!isPublsihed"></div>
<div data-ng-include src="'/Relevancy/functionRule/publishedFunctionRule.html'" ng-if="isPublsihed"></div>
</div>
<div id="showQueryRule" ng-controller="queryBuilderController" ng-if="showQueryRule">
<div data-ng-include src="'/Relevancy/queryRule/queryRule.html'" ng-if="!isPublsihed"></div>
<div data-ng-include src="'/Relevancy/queryRule/publishedQueryRule.html'" ng-if="isPublsihed"></div>
</div>
I have a parent controller from where I am making "showTermRule" variable true and broadcasting an event as follows
switch (rule) {
case "Term Rules":
$scope.currentRuleDisplayed = 'Significant Terms';
$scope.showTermRule = true;
$rootScope.$broadcast('updateTermRule',$scope.profileTree[$scope.currentProfile].termRules,$scope.currentProfile,$scope.profileTree[$scope.currentProfile].id);
break;
The problem I am facing is when I use ng-if in child controller, say TermRuleController, it is not able to catch the broadcasted event from parent controller. As per my understanding it is because by the time I am broadcasting event div element which is adding controller is not getting added to DOM.
I have tried same thing using ng-show. It is working then but then it is taking very long to load the page. Can someone suggest the right way to add partial views and controller. After some research I have found that instead of using ng-include I can use directive. I am yet not sure about it.
Also I guess writing service instead of broadcasting might solve the problem but my question is, is it the correct way to add partial views having different controllers?

You need to keep in mind when using ngInclude to split your templates into partials. Instead of applying a controller to an element in a layout-template, apply the controller to an element in the partial. That way you’ll not need to target its parent’s scopes, coupling controllers together by scope. Here’s an example: Layout.html
<div ng-controller="LoginCtrl">
<div ng-include="login.html"></div>
</div>
Login.html :
<form-field ng-field-data="{{login.usr_name}}"></form-field>
<form-field ng-field-data="{{login.password}}"></form-field>
In the case above, you would want to handle the login model in the
LoginCtrl controller, but the scope of the login partial login.html
will be one step deeper. Instead, define the controller on the same
level as the partial (see below).
Layout.html: <div ng-include="login.html"></div>
Login.html:
<div ng-controller="LoginCtrl">
<form-field ng-field-data="{{login.usr_name}}"></form-field>
<form-field ng-field-data="{{login.password}}"></form-field>
</div>
So, in this way $scope of parent and child controller would be same.
So, in your case you don't have to broadcast an event , it would be directly available in the child controller.
Hope, this articles helps you out from the problem that you are dealing.

Related

using ng elements outside of ng-controller

I am inexperienced with angular.
I am using angular to create a series of nested divs (a form) on a webpage. The top div has ng-controller="controllername" as an attribute. Within the nested divs is a div with ng-show="showvar" as an attribute.
It looks like this.
<div class="page">
<div ng-controller="controllername">
<div ng-show="showvar">Hidden Stuff</div>
</div>
</div>
When I perform functions on showvar to make it true, the div appears (and disappears when false) as intended.
I also have a completely separate div 'outside' the the original nest of divs with the ng-controller attribute. As such, there is no ng-controller attribute in this seperate hierarchy BUT I have nested another div inside with the ng-show="showvar" attribute.
Updated HTML structure is as such
<div class="page">
<div ng-controller="controllername">
<div ng-show="showvar">Hidden Stuff</div>
</div>
<div class="seperate">
<div ng-show="showvar">More Hidden Stuff</div>
</div>
</div>
When the page loads, both divs with ng-show="showvar" in the separate nests are hidden as ng-hide has been appended by angular. When I perform functions on showvar after the page load to make it true, only the div within the ng-controller div gets shown.
I (think I) understand this is because the ng elements are evaluated at page load (and appended with ng-hide, even outside the controller?) but only the ng elements within the div with the ng-controller attribute are evaluated when functions are performed after page load. Is this correct?
How can I get the other ng-show to be evaluate 'outside' of the ng-controller div?
I was thinking one option is to append ng-controller to the overall 'page' div instead of the nested div. But what other options do I have?
EDIT: I also tried simply adding ng-controller="controllername" to the separate div. I guess angular 'ignores' the duplicate ng-controller div?
The problem your facing is that the showvar resides in your controller's scope, your second usage of the showvar is not within that scope.
What you need to do is make sure the variable is available where needed.
Say you add the variable to the parentController (you don't have one in your example so I'll add one)
<div class="page" ng-controller="parentController">
<div ng-controller="controllername">
<div ng-show="showvar">Hidden Stuff</div>
</div>
<div class="seperate">
<div ng-show="showvar">More Hidden Stuff</div>
</div>
</div>
app.controller('ParentController', function($scope){
$scope.showvar = false;
});
problem with this is when you set showvar to true within your controllername controller it will set it in the innerscope and not the outer. When making sure you have the right scope by accessing it through another object you should be safe.
So try it like this:
<div class="page" ng-controller="parentController">
<div ng-controller="controllername">
<div ng-show="obj.showvar">Hidden Stuff</div>
</div>
<div class="seperate">
<div ng-show="obj.showvar">More Hidden Stuff</div>
</div>
</div>
app.controller('ParentController', function($scope){
$scope.obj = {
showvar: false
}
});
Quick demo
Your issue here is that you ended with 2 "showvar" variables: one within the "controllername" scope and another one on the app scope (as you have a ng-app declaration somewhere in your html parent of the "page" div).
When you load your page, you get the value of "showvar" in the controller scope for the first div, and for the "separate" one, you get the "showvar" variable in the app scope, which doesn't exist, therefore it is resolved to "false" (even though angular declares it for you in your app scope and you can even modify its value later).
When you change the value of "showvar" in the controller scope, it doesn't change the one in the app scope, making the "separate" div stay hidden forever =)

$scope.$emit not working while $rootScope.$broadcast does

Here's my parent controller where I listen for the event
app.controller("SectionLayoutController", function($scope) {
$scope.$on("sectionLayout.doAction", function(e, options) {
// do some stuff
});
});
And in my child controller I do this
$scope.$emit("sectionLayout.doAction", { someOption: "something" });
The event should be triggered in the parent controller but it isn't. I did check what the contents of my child controller's scope was (with console.log) right before emitting the event, and the listener for the event does exist in one of its parents.
Maybe it's because the child controller's scope is not a direct child of the scope where the event is being listened on? This is not really a critical issue because I can just replace the line with
$rootScope.$broadcast("sectionLayout.doAction", { someOption: "something" });
and it works fine, but I'm still curious as to why $scope.$emit isn't working (it did work at some point, it just stopped randomly).
(Angular version 1.2.16)
EDIT
The problem seems to be a bug in angular.js, not ui-router (it has already been reported and is scheduled for a fix in version 1.3 https://github.com/angular/angular.js/issues/5489). Using ng-transclude inside a directive seems to create a sibling scope for the directive, which makes this kind of hierarchy (with my first plunker example) : http://i.imgur.com/4OUxJSP.png.
So yeah, I guess for now i'll be using $rootScope.$broadcast
Ok, so from what I've found, this is a bug with ui-router (forgot to mention I was using that, oops).
If the ui-view of a child route is inside a transcluded directive, events will get stuck there. Here's a plunkr of that bug in action http://plnkr.co/edit/zgqAPiDbB2LUtwJaeHhN?p=preview. The Dummy controller uses the sectionLayout directive and the ui-view is transcluded (as you can see in dummy.html).
<!-- dummy.html -->
<div section-layout="layout">
<!-- transcluded stuff -->
<div ui-view></div>
</div>
<!-- sectionlayout.html -->
<div>
<p>Section Layout for {{layout.title}}</p>
<p ng-repeat="r in recieves">{{r.message}}</p>
<div ng-transclude style="background-color: #EEE;"></div>
</div>
Here's another plunkr where $scope.$emit does work, and the only difference is that the ui-view is directly inside sectionlayout.html instead of transcluded in the directive http://plnkr.co/edit/mVftwkZrynkF6KanE4zV?p=preview.
<!-- dummy.html -->
<div section-layout="layout"></div>
<!-- sectionlayout.html -->
<div>
<p>Section Layout for {{layout.title}}</p>
<p ng-repeat="r in recieves">{{r.message}}</p>
<div ui-view style="background-color: #EEE;"></div>
</div>
And here's a completely different plunkr where I don't use ui-router, but it's still the same thing. A directive is used in a parent where events are listened, and the child controller is transcluded in the directive. In this one, both $scope.$emit and $rootScope.$broadcast work fine, so it seems to be a bug with transcluded ui-views in ui-router. http://plnkr.co/edit/Iz5YcbMiTzrXQ6bJMskK?p=preview
<div ng-controller="ParentController">
<p>Parent Controller</p>
<p ng-repeat="r in recieves">{{r.message}}</p>
<div my-directive>
<div ng-controller="ChildController" style="background-color: #EEE;">
<p>Child Controller</p>
<button ng-click="tryEmit()">$scope.$emit</button>
<button ng-click="tryBroadcast()">$rootScope.$broadcast</button>
</div>
</div>
</div>
I'll report this bug on their github page

What's the best way for an angular controller to alter an ancestor HTML element?

I have an Angular controller which lives in a portion of the page however that application needs to get access to an HTML element that lives above it.
The best way to imagine the problem is that you have an embedded video which wants to request to be made full view-port:
<html ng-app="videoApp">
<body>
<div>
Other stuff that doesn't relate to the video player...
</div>
<div ng-controller="videoCtrl">
... stuff relating to the video controller
</div>
</body>
</html>
The exact problem is that the videoCtrl needs to be able to add a class to the body class such that it can switch the page layout to being full-page and dominated by the video.
Desired outcome, status of video app adds a "full-page" class to body tag:
<body ng-class="video.fullPage ? 'full-page', : ''">
What's would be the correct way for the video to add a class to an ancestor tag?
Under normal circumstances where the element we want to manipulate lies inside the controller that's doing the manipulation we can bind elements to variables in the scope:
<body> <!-- the videoCtrl scope is not available to <body> -->
<div ng-controller="videoCtrl">
<div ng-class="video.fullPage ? 'fullPage' : ''"></div>
</div>
</body>
However the body tag is not contained within the scope of the video controller and so has no access to the variables in its scope so we can't bind to them.
We could always reach out directly and change the class on the body using dom manipulation but that's not very Angular. What is the correct pattern for the video controller to alter the class of the body tag?
To meet a very similar requirement, I used Angular events. From the controller, $broadcast an event on $rootScope. Then have some sort of screen layout controller handle the event and toggle the possible screen configurations.
So:
child controller:
$rootScope.$broadcast('layout-action', { configuration: 'video' });
layout controller:
$scope.$on('layout-action', function(event, args) {
if (args.configuration == 'video') {
$scope.showVideo = true;
}
});
html:
<body ng-class="{'full-page': showVideo}">
*Note: this does slightly tie the child functionality to another part of the layout. However, perhaps try to generalize the video layout. For example, maybe you want a full screen mode instead.
If ng-app="videoApp" is the only parent, you could also do something on the button that would trigger the full-page class like this:
<body ng-class="{'full-page': showVideo}">
<div ng-controller="videoCtrl">
<button ng-click="$parent.showVideo = !$parent.showVideo">I'm in the video controller!</button>
</div>
</body>
In this case i'm just toggling showVideo to true or false. But like Davin said, this may not be as nice because it depends more on where it sits in the app.
See this plunkr for an example http://plnkr.co/edit/UxtA0YvCUckofAflsy9G

get ng-click, on injected element, to change the class of an element already in the view?

I have a <ul> that gets populated with the server. But in that controller there is also an iframe. When the <li>'s arrive there is some disconnect between them and the iframe even though they are in the same controller.
When you click one of the li's it should change the class on the iframe but it's not. However, If I move the iframe inside of the ng-repeat that injects the iframe it works.
View
<div class="content" ng-controller="FeedListCtrl">
<ul>
<li ng-repeat="item in items">
<div data-link="{{item.link}}" ng-click="articleShowHide='fade-in'">
<div ng-bind-html="item.title" style="font-weight:bold;"></div>
<div ng-bind-html="item.description"></div>
<!-- it works if i put the iframe here -->
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<!-- doesn't work when the iframe is here -->
<iframe id="article" ng-class="articleShowHide" src=""></iframe>
</div>
Here is the controller. It does an ajax call to get the data for each <li>
Controller
readerApp.controller('FeedListCtrl', ["$scope", "$http", "FeedListUpdate", function ($scope, $http, FeedListUpdate) {
$scope.setFeed = function (url) {
$http.get('feed?id=' + FeedListUpdate.GetCurrentFeedUrl()).success(function (data) {
$scope.items = data.currentFeed.items;
});
};
}]);
When inside of an ng-repeat you are in a different scope which means you are not setting the variable you think you are. Use $parent and that should work. The syntax is:
<div data-link="{{item.link}}" ng-click="$parent.articleShowHide='fade-in'">
Side note for others finding this - sometimes adding curly brackets helps as well. For more information on ng-class see here: http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/directive/ngClass
An Example
In case anyone wants to see this in action, I put together an example demonstrating a few ways to set the class as well as demonstrating the issue in scope (See: http://plnkr.co/edit/8gyZGzESWyi2aCL4mC9A?p=preview). It isn't very pretty but it should be pretty clear what is going on. By the way, the reason that methods work in this example is that the scope doesn't automatically redefine them the way it does variables so it is calling the method in the root scope rather than setting a variable in the repeater scope.
Best of luck!

Jasmine-jquery, testing generated GUI for (nested) directives

I recently started using jasmine-jquery (1.3.1) together with angular (1.0.6) and need an advice on testing GUI.
I have some view for controller, which has angular directives, like 'view.html':
<div id='main-div'>
<div my-directive objects-to-iterate='someScopeObjects'>
<span id='default-span'>some default text</span>
</div>
</div>
, and in JS a directive "myDirective" is defined, having template-by-url 'myDirective.html' which includes ng-repeat and makes some nested div (row) foreach in objectsToIterate.
I load fixtures for 'view.html' and 'myDirective.html'.
Now I would like to test that during user interaction there are really some elements (rows) in 'myDirective' repeated block.
Beginning was simple:
var div = $('div#main-div');
div = $compile(div)(scope);
scope.$digest();
expect(div).toBeVisible();
And now I'm stuck. Cannot get access to "generated" source of 'myDirective' element. If I use
div.find('whatever-selector-for-element-my-directive'),
I get
<div my-directive objects-to-iterate='someScopeObjects'>
<span id='default-span'>some default text</span>
</div>
If I try to compile+digest this html against scope, I still get same markup. How could I get "generated" source, looking like (pseudo)
<div id='my-directive-content'>
<div id='object-1'>blah</div>
<div id='object-2'>blah</div>
</div>
in order to check if there are N rows visible to user?
someScopeObjects in scope exist and are valid.
And my next step is actually testing same thing for directives nested inside of 'my-directive', so I somehow have to get access to the scope of 'my-directive'. How? :)
Thank you.

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