Angular - reusing code (service or controller) - angularjs

Question

I'm using Angular to develop commenting functionality for a web app.
Currently there are two sections in the application were a user can comment:
Category
Product
About 90% of the commenting functionality is the same for both sections and as such I would like to make this reusable - i.e write some service or controller that I can reference/use as a base.
So far, my research seems to point to using a factory service but unfortunately this doesn't seem to work (I've spent the whole day running through various tutorials).
It is quite possible that I am over thinking this and making it far too complicated but I honestly don't know which way to turn anymore.
Herewith a quick and dirty overview of what I have so far:
HTML view for the category
Controller for the category (receives data from service and posts data to service in order to bind data to model)
Service for the category (retrieve and stores all the necessary
data)
The product uses the same logic and a lot of the code in the service and controller will be duplicated.
I've merged the two services into one service successfully but I'm having trouble doing the same for the controller.
Do I:
Write a base controller that will communicate with the above mentioned service and that will hookup with the two existing controllers
OR
Write a factory/provider service that hooks up to the two existing controllers as well as the above mentioned service.

Answer 1

If you go the route of using a factory, you could put all the common functionality into its return object and reference that from your controllers.
Factory
angular.module('myModule').factory('CommonFunctions', function(){
return {
foo : foo,
bar : bar
}
function foo(){
console.log('foo');
};
function bar (){
console.log('bar');
};
}
Controller
angular.module('myModule')
.controller('myController', ['CommonFunctions', function(CommonFunctions) {
var vm = this;
vm.foo = CommonFunctions.foo();
vm.bar = CommonFunctions.bar();
}

Answer 2

angular's separation of service types ie:
for specific values
constant
value
(constant for specific values needed before other services are created)
for functions
factory
service
provider
(provider for specific instances when you need a services before other services are created, usually taking advantage of constants)
allow the ability to share data and ways to process that data between controllers and or directives, anything that can be a value can also be a constant, the only difference there being where they can be injected. Similarly any service can be rewritten to a factory or a provider, it is more your specific use case / what your more comfortable writing that would determine which to use, but really the best way to think about it is if you have a value that needs to be shared but is not needed inside angular.module.config then use value, otherwise use constant, now if you have a single function that you want to share, (maybe it processes that value in some way or maybe it just does something else) you should write it as a factory, then when you have a few of those factory's that deal with either that value, or anything else, you can combine them into a service or configure and combine them using a provider. here is a simple example (note i am using the recommended syntax for writing angular services):
'use strict';
var app = angular.module('test.app',[]);
app.constant('configureableValue',{defaultValue:55});
app.value('editableValue',{defaultValue:100,editedValue:null});
app.provider('configureValue',configureValueProvider);
configureValueProvider.$inject - ['configureableValue'];
function configureValueProvider(configureableValue){
var defaultVal = configureableValue.defaultValue,
originalVal = defaultVal;
return {
getValue:getValue,
setValue:setValue,
resetValue:resetValue,
'$get':providerFunc
};
function getValue(){
return defaultVal;
}
function setValue(val){
defaultVal = val;
}
function providerFunc(){
return {
get:function(){ return getValue(); },
reset:function(){ resetValue(); }
};
}
function resetValue(){
defaultVal = originalVal
}
}
// this factory is an example of a single function service, this should almost always be defined as a factory
app.factory('getEditableValue',getEditableValue);
getEditableValue.$inject = ['editableValue'];
function getEditableValue(editableValue){
return function(){
return editableValue.editedValue ? editableValue.editedValue : editableValue.defaultValue;
};
}
// same with this one
app.factory('setEditableValue',setEditableValue);
setEditableValue.$inject = ['editableValue'];
function setEditableValue(editableValue){
return function(val){
editableValue.editedValue = val;
}
}
// now this is an example of a service service collecting the factorys for an object with all the related behavior we need
app.service('editableService',editableService);
editableService.$inject = ['getEditableValue','setEditableValue'];
function editableService(getEditableValue,setEditableValue){
var self = this;
self.setVal = setEditableValue;
self.getVal = getEditableValue;
}
app.config(appConfig);
appConfig.$inject = ['configureValueProvider'];
function appConfig(configureValueProvider){
configureValueProvider.setValue('i changed '+ configureValueProvider.getValue() +' to this!!!!');
}
app.run(appRun);
appRun.$inject = ['configureValue','editableService'];
function appRun(configureValue,editableService){
console.log('before editing: ',editableService.getVal());
editableService.setVal('changed!!!');
console.log('after editing: ',editableService.getVal());
console.log('we changed this in the config func: ',configureValue.get());
configureValue.reset();
console.log('and now its back to the original value: ',configureValue.get());
}
i know thats a lot for a simple example, but there are a lot of features provided by angular, and many ways to use them, hopefully this helps.