I am trying to create an angular-js directive that encapsules editing a list of items: It should iterate over a list, repeating the wrapped element of the directive for every item and add some controls to each line (deleting elements, moving elements around, ...). Ideally I would like to use the directive like this:
<edit-list list="mylist">
<input ng-model="item.name">
<input ng-model="item.location">
</edit-list>
where the directives template should be like this (as demonstration I added a button for deleting items):
<div ng-repeat="item in list track by $index">
<span ng-transclude></span><button ng-click="delete_item($index)">
</div>
However, I can't get this to work. I tried to adapt this answer which manages to repeat the wrapped element over a list, however the plunker does not work anymore with modern angularjs versions (see my forked plunker which changes only the version of angularjs).
Nevertheless, here is a plunker tries to implement what I want to accomplish, but failes: It seems like the transcluded element can't see the item anymore. This makes sense given the documentation for ng-transclude, but I could not figure out how to make the wrapped element see the scope of the directive again.
I've updated your plnkr here http://plnkr.co/edit/GZsfp0HaeAVg5NjMBtGC?p=preview and made some changes:
Your goal is to ng-repeat over a list. There is no need for ng-transclude since you already binding your list to your directive.
I removed the reference to ng-transclude in your directive
I amended your delete method to pluck the proper item from the list.
Related
I'm trying to go with the best approach and avoid unnecessary rendering/processing time in my AngularJS app when choosing between 2 directives to be displayed in the page inside an ngRepeat loop, want to know which is the best way:
If by setting the ng-if directly in the directive html element, like:
<div ng-repeat="element in list">
<my-directive-a ng-if="someFunction(element)"></my-directive-a>
<my-directive-b ng-if="!someFunction(element)"></my-directive-b>
</div>
Or by moving out the first <div> from the directive's template and use it as a wrapper for each directive. For instance:
<div ng-repeat="element in list">
<div ng-if="someFunction(element)">
<my-directive-a></my-directive-a>
</div>
<div ng-if="!someFunction(element)">
<my-directive-b></my-directive-b>
</div>
</div>
NOTE: The starting <div> element on each directive could be modified behave the same so I will basically take that out of the directive's html and moving it outside the directive declaration in order to place the ng-if there
What would be the best approach for this case? Are there any performance implications from doing it one way or another? Or is it just the same thing? Consider that the number of elements in the list could get really big.
They are quite the same, but you can improve performance with one-time binding, but only when element does not change at runtime (for example, let's say that it has property name, and your someFunction is like return element.name === 'John'). Angular just stop observing this function when it returns value, and watches will be deleted. There are 2 prerequisites to use this solution:
Elements properties in list does not change (if you rely on them in someFunction), for example if you rely on name property name must not change, because watcher on someFunction is note available.
When list changes or its elements properties change, you reload all list (for example, you fetch it from server again if you know that change occurred)
What you get with this? There is no watches after my-directives are drawn on ng-ifs, and when something changes, new reference is bound to list (for example, it comes from server) and everything will be redrawn, ng-ifs will run again and when will become stable (function returns value) then will be unbound. How it looks like? Like this:
<div ng-repeat="element in list">
<div ng-if="::(someFunction(element))">
<my-directive-a></my-directive-a>
</div>
<div ng-if="::(!someFunction(element))">
<my-directive-b></my-directive-b>
</div>
</div>
Two colons before expression. But be aware, that with one-time binding it's easy to mess up - you need to be sure that you test your code enough to be sure it works.
Several times when creating or customizing a directive (either my own directive or for example https://github.com/dpiccone/ng-pageslide) I get a point where all the display logic is controlled by a single css class. At that point the directive boils down to adding and removing a single class. So instead of using a new directive I can simply use the ng-class directive (see an example here: https://gist.github.com/Hypercubed/8f40556eb0f6eddbcca3). Is there an advantage to the custom directive approach vs the ng-class/CSS styles approach? I guess the custom directive doesn't depend on $animate? Am I just doing it wrong?
Sorry for another directive vs. XXX question.
I think you're failing to see the forest for the all tress. You're focusing on a very minute detail and missing the larger picture. Directives are more than simply applying styles. I think an example is best. For example, take the rating directive. If you wanted to render a star rating model it might look like this:
<div ng-rating="album.rating" max="5"></div>
That may add the following to the DOM:
<ul class="inline">
<li ng-repeat="i in max">
<i ng-class="{ 'icon-start-empty': i > rating, 'icon-star': i <= rating }"></i>
</li>
</ul>
Under the covers ng-class it utilized, but that is only a part of the logic encapsulated in the rating directive. It allows the user to configure how many stars the rating is out of, and renders the same number of li elements. Then because you wrote a directive it allows you to reuse this logic where ever it's required. Using ng-class only works in that 1 location. If you want to do the same thing you're copying code which is a sign maybe you want to wrap that logic up in a directive.
I am trying to do what looks like a simple process: to display a list of items received from an HTTP request with animation.
First of all, here is my way of doing it ( I am open to any suggestions to do it in a better angular way ):
I define a scope variable state that I initialize to loading in my controller and that I change to loaded when I receive data from the HTTP request.
I initialize a scope variable items with the received data.
In my view, I use ng-switch for the states, and ng-repeat with the items.
I define an animation with css on ng-repeat.
Here is a plunkr ( with a $timeout instead of the request ).
I cannot understand why the animation does not work.
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.
The reason it is happening is because your ng-when. The same thing happens with ng-if, but would work fine if you used ng-show.
The problem is that when your ng-when condition returns true, the ng-when first renders it's content in a detatched dom (so animations do not happen). This dom is then attached to the dom tree (this step is animated but you would have to put your animation class on the ng-when).
When using something like ng-show or ng-hide things work as expected because the dom is always attached (it is simply shown/hidden).
This might be considered either a bug or a limitation of ng-animate, you might want to post a github issue and see if the angular guys have any thoughts.
It seems to be a "feature" of angular that it won't add .ng-enter to repeat items inside ng-switch-when block. You can remove ng-switch-when="loaded" and it will work (You don't really need it as ng-repeat won't do anything if there is no items)
<div ng-switch="state">
<div ng-switch-when="loading">
<p>Please wait...</p>
</div>
<div >
<ul ng-repeat="item in items" class="animate-items">
<li>{{item}}</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
http://plnkr.co/edit/ocEj7BSQPSeIdnnfAOIE?p=preview
Here is my plnkr: http://plnkr.co/edit/n8cRXwIpHJw3jUpL8PX5?p=preview You have to click on a li element and the form will appear. Enter a random string and hit 'add notice'. Instead of the textarea text you will get undefined.
Markup:
<ul>
<li ng-repeat="ticket in tickets" ng-click="select(ticket)">
{{ ticket.text }}
</li>
</ul>
<div ui-if="selectedTicket != null">
<form ng-submit="createNotice(selectedTicket)">
<textarea ng-model="noticeText"></textarea>
<button type="submit">add notice</button>
</form>
</div>
JS part:
$scope.createNotice = function(ticket){
alert($scope.noticeText);
}
returns 'undefined'. I noticed that this does not work when using ui-if of angular-ui. Any ideas why this does not work? How to fix it?
Your problem lies in the ui-if part. Angular-ui creates a new scope for anything within that directive so in order to access the parent scope, you must do something like this:
<textarea ng-model="$parent.noticeText"></textarea>
Instead of
<textarea ng-model="noticeText"></textarea>
This issue happened to me while not using the ng-if directive on elements surrounding the textarea element. While the solution of Mathew is correct, the reason seems to be another. Searching for that issue points to this post, so I decided to share this.
If you look at the AngularJS documentation here https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/directive/textarea , you can see that Angular adds its own directive called <textarea> that "overrides" the default HTML textarea element. This is the new scope that causes the whole mess.
If you have a variable like
$scope.myText = 'Dummy text';
in your controller and bind that to the textarea element like this
<textarea ng-model="myText"></textarea>
AngularJS will look for that variable in the scope of the directive. It is not there and thus he walks down to $parent. The variable is present there and the text is inserted into the textarea. When changing the text in the textarea, Angular does NOT change the parent's variable. Instead it creates a new variable in the directive's scope and thus the original variable is not updated. If you bind the textarea to the parent's variable, as suggested by Mathew, Angular will always bind to the correct variable and the issue is gone.
<textarea ng-model="$parent.myText"></textarea>
Hope this will clear things up for other people coming to this question and and think "WTF, I am not using ng-if or any other directive in my case!" like I did when I first landed here ;)
Update: Use controller-as syntax
Wanted to add this long before but didn't find time to do it. This is the modern style of building controllers and should be used instead of the $parent stuff above. Read on to find out how and why.
Since AngularJS 1.2 there is the ability to reference the controller object directly instead of using the $scope object. This may be achieved by using this syntax in HTML markup:
<div ng-controller="MyController as myc"> [...] </div>
Popular routing modules (i.e. UI Router) provide similar properties for their states. For UI Router you use the following in your state definition:
[...]
controller: "MyController",
controllerAs: "myc",
[...]
This helps us to circumvent the problem with nested or incorrectly addressed scopes. The above example would be constructed this way. First the JavaScript part. Straight forward, you simple do not use the $scope reference to set your text, just use this to attach the property directly to the controller object.
angular.module('myApp').controller('MyController', function () {
this.myText = 'Dummy text';
});
The markup for the textarea with controller-as syntax would look like this:
<textarea ng-model="myc.myText"></textarea>
This is the most efficient way to do things like this today, because it solves the problem with nested scopes making us count how many layers deep we are at a certain point. Using multiple nested directives inside elements with an ng-controller directive could have lead to something like this when using the old way of referencing scopes. And no one really wants to do that all day!
<textarea ng-model="$parent.$parent.$parent.$parent.myText"></textarea>
Bind the textarea to a scope variable's property rather than directly to a scope variable:
controller:
$scope.notice = {text: ""}
template:
<textarea ng-model="notice.text"></textarea>
It is, indeed, ui-if that creates the problem. Angular if directives destroy and recreate portions of the dom tree based on the expression. This is was creates the new scope and not the textarea directive as marandus suggested.
Here's a post on the differences between ngIf and ngShow that describes this well—what is the difference between ng-if and ng-show/ng-hide.
Normally, with a form and input fields, the form controller is published into the related scope under the form name attribute. And, the NgModelController is published under the input name attribute.
So for an input field with an ngModel directive, the NgModelController for the input field can be retrieved like $scope.myFormName.myInputFieldName
The question is how to do the same thing (get the NgModelController) for input fields inside the ngRepeat directive?
I would like to name the input fields using $index as part of the name so each template instance is uniquely named. This renders OK, so
<input name="foo_{{$index}}" ...
renders the instance with $index == 3 to
<input name="foo_3" ...
But trying to get the ngModelController via the published names does not work (it's undefined), e.g.:
$scope.myFormName.foo_3
A plunker showing this is here: http://plnkr.co/edit/jYDhZfgC3Ud0fXUuP7To?p=preview
It shows successfully getting the ngModelController for a 'plain' input element and calling $setValidity, and also shows failing to get the ngModelController for an input element inside an ngRepeat directive.
Copied the relevant section of code from the plunker below:
<div ng-repeat="element in elements">
<div ng-class="{error: form['foo_{{$index}}'].$invalid}">
<input name="foo_{{$index}}" ng-model="element.a" type="number">
<span ng-show="form['foo_{{$index}}'].$error.bar">ngRepeat bar invalid</span>
</div>
</div>
{{form.foo_0.$setValidity('bar', false)}}
#Flek is correct that the new child scopes that ng-repeat creates are the root of the problem here. Since browsers do not allow nesting of <form> elements, ngForm must be used when nesting forms, or when you want to do form validation inside ngRepeat.
See Pawel's answer on the google group thread, which shows how to use ng-form to create inner forms, and/or #blesh's SO answer.
If i understand your question correctly, you are trying to have access to the form elements created inside the ng-repeat.
Please have a look at this fiddle http://jsfiddle.net/EF5Jp/. Inside the button click handler you will have the access to the element with id myForm.foo_2. You can notice that the element is retrieved by myForm.foo_2 and not $scope.myForm.foo_2. Second thing is, changing the value using its scope and not using its value property like angular.element(element).scope().foo = 6;.