Why does my watcher gets called twice on the same change? - angularjs

I have an AngularJS 1.4* application running locally (yet). This app is served by an Laravel 5.1 backend RESTFul API.
I have to make this app that represents a package trip. A package is composed by days, ranging from 0 to N days. Each day have a list of services, ranging from 0 to N services. And a hotel.
My web server, from which my laravel application consumes from, delivers me a pre-setted package, containing a list of days: each one with a list of services and a hotel data (unused so far). On the response I have a list of properties for the package (that don't matter for now) and an array of days, called days_info. That response is being put in the $scope.package, on my PackageController. The PackageController also declares an directive called packageBlock, that consists in a list of days, and some other data for the package.
<div ng-repeat="day in package.days_info" class='row'>
<div class='col-md-12'>
<package-days-block></package-days-block>
</div>
</div>
Inside <package-days-block> directive, I have another to iterate through the list of services inside every day.
<div class='container-fluid' ng-repeat='service in day.services' ng-controller="ServiceController">
<service-block></service-block>
</div>
That's where the problem begins: to my undestandment, I now have a $scope.service inside my ServiceController. So, I started to change it on my need inside the ServiceController through a $scope.service.
The $scope.service has an attribute called service_id. I put a listener/watcher on it, so at any time the $scope.service.service_id is changed, I ask for another service_table (holds the informations about the services, it's based on the service_id previously choosen or changed by the user), and put it in the $scope.service.table.
// ServiceController
$scope.reloadServicesTable = function(service_id, service_day, date, paxes){
MandatoryService.getServiceTable(service_id, service_day, date, paxes)
.then(
function(service_data) {
$scope.service.table = service_data;
},
...
);
The reloadServicesTable is called on the watcher for the service_id changes.
// ServiceController
$scope.$watch(
'service.service_id', // Places the watcher to watch the changes on the service's ID.
function(new_service, old_service) {
if( new_service === old_service )
return;
$scope.reloadServicesTable($scope.service.service_id, $scope.service.service_day, $scope.day.date, $scope.package.paxes);
}
);
The problem starts here: the request for the service's table is called twice when the service_id only changes once.
WHY, GOD, WHY?!
There's another part of my code where I, from the PackageController, run through the entire days_info array and reads the value of an attribute price inside the service.table: service.table.price. In there, I realise that there's two scope's: the one I handling and the other that I have no FREAKING IDEA where it came from!
If I put an console.log($scope); inside the method that runs through the days_info, I get two scopes for every request. This method is on the PackageController.
Any ideas why this is happening?
P.S.: It's my very first AngularJS application, so, take easy if I messed up on something basic...
EDIT:
As pointed out by an fellow on the comments, my question wasn't very reproducible. Sadly, I can't put here only the part I'm having doubts cause I don't have the slightest idea where the problem lies! (I know that this isn't much of help)
I took some screen shots from the Chrome Console:
First, the requestions fired on the change of the service_id
As you can see, every request is called twice everytime. This is not an one-time-thing. The /api/service/{id}... is the call for the service's table information. The /api/service/by_route/origin/... returns an list of services from one city to another (or the same). One does not interfere on the other.
The other image is the output from a console.log from the PackageController $scope, on the time that the service_id is being changed.
As you can see, there's two different scopes. And the b scope is son of the r scope. The r scope is also calling the watcher on the service_id?
The call for the sums price is been called twice from differente places, as you can see in the image below:

It may solve you issue. Even i had faced exactly the same as you are mentioning.
The reason for me was that, the controller was getting initialized again and there was a separate api call written in that, which was intended to load the page initially.
There can also be a scenario where you have assigned controller twice in the mark up.

<div ng-repeat="day in package.days_info" class='row'>
<div class='col-md-12'>
<package-days-block day="day"></package-days-block>
</div>
</div>
<div class='container-fluid' ng-repeat='service in day.services'>
<service-block service="service"></service-block>
</div>
Pass day and service down into directives. Use two way binding to pass your day and service changes back up to package.days_info.
Remove your ServiceController It does not make much sense to ng-repeat a controller. <service-block> and <package-days-block> are E directive that handle logic.
Write only one watcher in your PackageController that watch package.days_info When your day or service change, it can simply find out and do something about it.
Just Chill and fix it.

Related

How does AngularJS handle Memory

I am wondering how AngularJS 'saves' its data/model. Does it actually save it or.. how does it work?
We are using different methods to retrieve JSON data. In other frameworks like jQuery we had to think about how to store data locally, i.e. when we want to provide a sorting possibility. In Angular this seems different, it seems to do all that for us out of the box.
Is it that Angular displays everything how it is supposed to be and looks at changes, reads in the displayed data in and then displays it differently or does it use a local storage to save the raw json.. and work from there? (This would limit the amount of data we can feed)
Here is a simple code-example:
$http.get("url-to-json")
.success(function(returnedData) {
$scope.search_result = returnedData['search_result'];
})
From there I can just use:
<div ng-repeat='result in search_results | sortResult:"price":sorted' id="res_<% result.id %>" class="result">
Product: <% result.name %>
</div>
I am riddled how Angular still knows the data and doesn't have to load it again from the external source.
Do you know?
There is a lot more that goes into it, but essentially its all stored in local memory. Angular creates an object of all your scope properties. When you do data binding in angular you are registering an event listener and when that event is called angular loops through this object detecting if something has changed, and if so updates the object accordingly. Each time an update occurs it returns to the loop to check if anything else has been updated. This is what is referred to as the $digestLoop.
SOURCE
The ng-book

Need explanation on a angular direcive load

I just want to understand why in the following jsFiddle 'here is a lo' is printed three times.
http://jsfiddle.net/wg385a1h/5/
$scope.getLog = function () {
console.log('here is a log');
}
Can someone explain me why ? What should I change to have only one log "here is a log" (that's what I would like this fiddle do). Thanks a lot.
Angular uses digest cycles/iterations to determine when state has changed and needs to update the UI. If it finds any change on one of it's cycles, it keeps rerunning cycles until the data stabilizes itself. If it's done 10 cycles and the data is still changing, you'll see a rather know message: "angularjs 10 iterations reached. aborting".
Therefor, The fact that you are seeing the message displayed 3 times is because you have a simple interface. In fact, you can get up to many more such messages in the log, due to the fact that your directive uses {{getLog()}}. Angular keeps evaluating the expression to see if it changed.
To avoid such problems, under normal circumstances, you should store the value returned by the function you want called only once in the $scope object inside the controller and use that variable (not the function call) in the UI.
So in the controller you'd have $scope.log = getLog() [assuming it returns something, and not just writing to the console] and in the directive use the template {{log}}. This way, you'll get the value only once, per controller instance.
Hope I was clear enough.

Refreshing translations using angular-translate

I'm using angular translate for i18n.
The particular feature I'm working on is updating the status of a book. In the service callback, if successful, I am updating my book status from, say, Open to Closed. If I view the scope (using Batarang), I can see my DOM element as such:
<span translate="Closed" class="ng-scope">Open</span>
As you can see, the translate value is being updated, but the translation itself isn't occurring on its own. I've read the docs and understand this is expected behavior. What I want to know, though, is how should I be refreshing the translated value?
Presently, I'm injecting the $translate service and executing $translate.refresh() every time I update a scope value that needs to be re-translated. I feel like that's clunky, and probably not the way I should be doing it.
Any thoughts?
You definitely should not issue a refresh for this.
just do something like this:
<span> {book.state | translate} </span>
Given that your book model has a member state to reflect it's state.
Whenever the model changes, the value of state will be re-translated.
Create a common service for translation, this will configure our translation code, in particular it will configure the location of our translation files. Create a directory src/common/translation, and a file src/common/translation/translation.js:
http://technpol.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/adding-translation-using-angular-translate-to-an-angularjs-app/
angular.module('angularTranslateApp', ['pascalprecht.translate'])
.config(function($translateProvider, $translatePartialLoaderProvider) {
$translateProvider.useLoader('$translatePartialLoader', {
urlTemplate: '/UI/assets/translation/{lang}/{part}.json'
}
});
$translateProvider.preferredLanguage('en-AU'); });

Having a set of checkboxes map to a nested array

I am working on a SPA that pulls in customer data from one $resource call, and gets some generic preference data from another $resource call.
The preference data is sent as an array, which I want to use to populate a series of checkboxes, like so:
<div ng-repeat="pref in fieldMappings.mealPrefs">
<input type="checkbox"
id="pref_{{$index}}"
ng-model="customer.mealPrefs"
ng-true-value="{{pref.name}}" />
<label class="checkbox-label">{{pref.name}}</label>
</div>
When a user clicks one or more checkboxes, I want the values represented in that array of checkboxes to be mapped to an array nested inside a customer object, like so:
.controller( 'AppCtrl', function ( $scope, titleService, AccountDataService ) {
// this is actually loaded via $resource call in real app
$scope.customer = {
"name": "Bob",
"mealPrefs":["1", "3"]
};
// this is actually loaded via $resource call in real app
$scope.fieldMappings.mealPrefs = [
{'id':"1", 'name':"Meat"},
{'id':"2", 'name':"Veggies"},
{'id':"3", 'name':"Fruit"},
{'id':"4", 'name':"None"}
];
});
I have tried setting up ng-click events to kick off functions in the controller to manually handle the logic of filling the correct part of the customer object model, and $watches to do the same. While I have had some success there, I have around 2 dozen different checkbox groups that need to be handled somehow (the actual SPA is huge), and I would love to implement this functionality in a way that is very clean and repeatable, without duplicating lots of click handlers and setting up lots of $watches on temporary arrays of values. Anyone in the community already solved this in a way that they feel is pretty 'best practice'?
I apologize if this is a repeat - I've looked at about a dozen or more SO answers around angular checkboxes, and have not found one that is pulling values from one object model, and stuffing them in another. Any help would be appreciated.
On a side-note, I'm very new to plunkr (http://plnkr.co/edit/xDjkY3i0pI010Em0Fi1L?p=preview) - I tried setting up an example to make it easier for folks answer my question, but can't get that working. If anyone wants to weigh in on that, I'll set up a second question and I'll accept that answer as well! :)
Here is a JSFiddle I put together that shows what you want to do. http://jsfiddle.net/zargyle/t7kr8/
It uses a directive, and a copy of the object to display if changes were made.
I would use a directive for the checkbox. You can set the customer.mealPrefs from the directive. In the checkbox directive's link function, bind to the "change" event and call a function that iterates over the customer's mealPrefs array and either adds or removes the id of the checkbox that is being changed.
I took your code and wrote this example: http://plnkr.co/edit/nV4fQq?p=preview

Angularjs scope not retaining value

Friends..
For my understanding of how routing works in Angular I have created a simple application. This application has only two pages:
1. The first page will display all rows of the employee table. Upon clicking on a particular row, second page will display a form with details of that employee.
The list that is displayed on the first page uses the following code:
<table>
<tr ng-repeat="employee in employees">
<td>{{employee.firstname}} - {{employee. address}}</td>
<td><span ng-click="getSingleEmployeeDetails(employee.id)">Edit</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
I am using the same controller for both these pages and this controller looks like below:
function EmployeeCtrl($scope,$http,Employee,$location,$routeParams) {
// Get all employee details
var data;
Employee.query().then(function(_data) {
$scope.employees = _data.data;
});
// Get Single Employee Details
$scope.getSingleEmployeeDetails = function(id) {
$scope.employee = scope.employees[id];
$location.path('/editemployee/' + id);
}
}
However the issue I am facing is that when the code gets routed to /editemployee/1
for some reason the $scope.employees looses its values.
In other words the form never gets populated with employee details.
What am I doing wrong here ?
This has to do with scoping. The employees are loaded into the EmployeeCtrl when it is instantiated. Once you perform a routing event in getSingleEmployeeDetails() that causes a different controller to load with a different $scope. A $scope that is separate from the $scope inside EmployeeCtrl. One easy way around this is to let EmployeeCtrl handle the functionality of loading/displaying all employees and a single employee without routing to a new controller. The pros here is that it makes it easier to share information, and you don't have to reload the single employee information when the user clicks on a single employee because you can share that information more easily. The con is that you don't get back button navigation to navigate between selections of single employees.
The other option is to let the SingleEmployeeCtrl reload the information when it navigates. The pro is you get back button access again, but the con is you load the information twice (once for loading the full list, and twice for loading the employee information again). This also allows the user to bookmark single employee records, but who bookmarks things anymore?
Others have already explained the fact that a new controller (and $scope) are created when you change routes. Also note that $scope.employees is populated asynchronously, when the promise is resolved. What is likely happening is that getSingleEmployeeDetails() is being called before the promise is resolved, so the employees array is empty.
To solve the problem, I suggest a different architecture.
You have two views/pages. Each view in Angular typically has its own controller. Models/data are typically stored in services, and an API to retrieve and manipulate those models/data is made available/public by the service. A controller just glues everything together: it injects the service(s) it needs, and then references only the models/data that the associated view needs.
So, even though your app is simple, I suggest the above approach: one service (which stores your employee objects), two controllers, two views. In particular, put the query() call into your service (so it will be called once, when the service is created) and store your data in the service. The service API should define functions/methods that return a promise that will eventually contain the desired data (list of employees, or just one). The controllers should use those methods to get a reference to the desired data.
See also Should services expose their asynchronicity? for an example of how to store the data in the service.

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