AngularUI Router - scroll to element on state change - angularjs

Question

I have searched on StackOverflow for the last five hours and none of the related answers quite solve my problem. I have an UI-Router state that loads a long list of messages generated from a custom directive. This page is linked too in many places pointing to a different message. I want to scroll to the currently selected message.
I can get this to work using $anchorScroll if I surround the call with a $timeout. $timeout(function(){$anchorScroll()};) but if the $timeout is not there a call to $anchorScroll does nothing since the View has not completely loaded.
Here is most of the relevant code.
<message id='message{{message.id}}'
ng-repeat='message in messages'
message='message'
ng-class="{'current':current == 'message{{message.id}}'}" >
</message>
In the controller I set current to $scope.current = $location.hash(). This all works.
If I load the page like #/messages#message100 directly the page will correctly scroll. However, if from a different view I use the a link such as this:
<button ui-sref="message-state({'#':'message{{message.id}}'})>
Go To Message {{message.id}}
</button>
The page will not automatically scroll to the correct anchor since the message list has not been made yet. But by putting the call to $anchorScroll() in a $timeout I can make the page scroll.
I don't like using $timeout for this purpose. I know I am not supposed to manipulate the DOM in a controller like this.
I have tried registering the call to $anchorScroll() with many of the $stateProvider events such as:
$state.$on('$viewContentLoaded', function(event) {
$anchorScroll();
});
But even at the time the $viewContentLoaded fires the message list does not exist in the DOM and the page does not scroll.
IWhat is the best way to make the UI-Router scroll based on the $location.hash().

Answer 1

Even I was facing a similar situation and after days of try and error, I came up with this.
In ui router add an id parameter to the state on which you want to enable the scroll.
$stateProvider.state('index', {
url: '/',
params: {
id: null
}
})
Then in the html use ui-sref
<li><a ui-sref="index({id: 'about-us'})" >About Us</a></li>
At last in the app.run module detect the state change using
$rootScope.$on('$viewContentLoaded', function(event){
if ($state.current.name == 'index') {
if($stateParams.id) {
$anchorScroll.yOffset = 150;
$location.hash($stateParams.id);
$timeout(function(){$anchorScroll()}, 1000);
}
}
});
Hope this helps. Would do a plunkr if needed.