Dynamic id inside AngularJS template - angularjs

Question

I'm wrapping a jQuery plugin inside a AngularJS directive. The way I would like to call the directive is for example:
<my-dialog data-trigger-id="myTriggerId">My dialog content...</my-dialog>
Inside my directive template it looks like this:
<button id="{{triggerId}}">Button text...</button>
I attach the event for the jQuery plugin (where you specify the trigger selector) inside the link function of my directive. My problem is that it works if I hardcode the id of the button inside the directive template like this:
<button id="myTriggerId">Button text...</button>
The generated html looks fine in the browser, which means that rendering an element with a dynamic id works. It's just that the jQuery plugin cannot find this element if I use the dynamic id but it works with the hardcoded version.
I also looked up AngularJS compile because it looks like at the point where the jQuery plugin wants to initialize the element doesn't exist yet.
Is there a gotcha I'm missing? Thanks!
Edit: I finally managed to simplify it down and create a jsfiddle example. If you run the example, you will see in the console that the element doesn't exist at the time I'm logging it but if you inspect the DOM, you will see that it's there and has the correct id.
However if you hardcode the id in the template (id=test instead of id={{elemId}}), the console log will show that one element could be found. I hope this helps to find a solution.
http://jsfiddle.net/a1nxyv8u/7/

Answer 1

The digest has not yet rendered in the DOM by the time you are calling you $("#test").length.
You need to add in a $timeout so that the digest will complete, then call your method
var app = angular.module('app', []);
app.directive('myDialog', ['$timeout', function ($timeout) {
return {
restrict: 'E',
template: '<button id="{{elemId}}" class="{{elemClass}}">Open dialog</button>',
link: function (scope, element, attrs) {
var selector = scope.elemSelector,
elemClass = (selector.indexOf('.') > -1) ? selector.substr(1) : '',
elemId = (selector.indexOf('#') > -1) ? selector.substr(1) : '';
scope.elemClass = elemClass;
scope.elemId = elemId;
$timeout(function() {
console.log('elem: ', $('#test').length);
});
// jQuery plugin init here but element doesn't seem to exist yet.
},
scope: {
elemSelector: '#'
}
}
}]);
Although it should be noted that you should try and alleviate any Id's at all and just use $(element) instead unless your jQuery absolutely needs the Id.