Function is called twice upon ng-blur and form submission - angularjs

Question

In this plunk I have a form with an input field and a button. The input field's ng-blur and the form submission call the same function validate(). Problem is that when the cursor is on the input field AND the user clicks on "Submit" the function is triggered twice, as there's a blur when the focus passes to the button. In that scenario, I need the function to be called once.
If you look at the console.log you'll see how the function is triggered twice. Any ideas how to fix this?
HTML
<form name="myForm" ng-submit="validate(2)">
<input type="text" ng-model="someField" ng-blur="validate(1)" />
<br/>
<button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>
Javascript
var app = angular.module('example', []);
app.controller('ctl', function ($scope) {
$scope.validate = function(x) {
console.log("field validated - " + x);
};
});

Answer 1

Here's I would like to solve this. I put a submitted variable which determines whether form is submitted or not. So, in the validate function, we first determine whether submitted is true or not. But, the important point here is we would need to make it false when we complete the API call. Something like this:
app.controller('ctl', function ($scope) {
$scope.submitted = false;
$scope.validate = function(x) {
if($scope.submitted === true) {
return;
}
$scope.submitted = true;
console.log("field validated - " + x);
// change $scope.submitted back to false in success and error callback of
// the API call
};
});
This solution has another side benefit. It stops users from submitting the form twice (using multiple clicks on submit button?)
We could have utilized formName.$submitted too but here one of the function calls will have it and another wouldn't.
Here's updated plunker

Answer 2

that's obvious, but you can always discriminate on the basis of event type, just pass an extra attribute denoting the type of event
EDIT : ng-change instead of ng-blur (description in comment)
html
<form name="myForm" ng-submit="validate(2)">
<input type="text" ng-model="someField" ng-change="validate(1)" />
<br/>
<button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>
js
$scope.validate = function(x) {
console.log("field validated - " + x);
};