ng-show not working inside directive template - angularjs

Question

I would like to do something like this
fiddle, making the text disappear and reappear with every click.
Problem is, it seem that with an isolated scope you can't have access to the controller scope. I solved it in the link function, handling there click event and setting my "showMe" flag using scope.$apply, like:
scope.$apply('showMe = false');
Is this the right way to go or there is some more elegant method?

Answer 1

Here you go (http://jsfiddle.net/66d0t7k0/1/)
Put your click handler in the link function and expose showMe to the scope
app.directive('example', function () {
return {
restrict: 'E',
template: '<p ng-show=\"showMe\">Text to show</p><button ng-click=\"clickMe()\">Click me</button>',
scope: {
exampleAttr: '#'
},
link: function (scope) {
scope.clickMe = function () {
scope.showMe = !scope.showMe;
};
}
};
});

Answer 2

To expand on apairet's answer, since your directive is using an isolated scope, you could handle all of that in the template itself like so:
app.directive('example', function () {
return {
restrict: 'E',
template: '<p ng-show=\"showMe\">Text to show</p><button ng-init=\"showMe = false\" ng-click=\"showMe = !showMe\">Click me</button>',
scope: {
exampleAttr: '#'
},
link: function (scope) {
}
};
});
Another consideration is to use ng-if rather than ng-show as it doesn't render the element in the DOM until the expression evaluates to true.

Answer 3

You can hide the scope in the directive by setting scope: false
You can then put all your function in the main controller scope
angular.module('appMyApp').directive('appMyAppItem', function() {
return {
transclude: true,
templateUrl: 'link/to/url',
controller: 'appMyAppController',
scope: false
}
});
angular.module('appMyApp').controller('appMyAppController', ['$scope', function($scope){
$scope.showItem = true;
$scope.toggleItem = function(){
$scope.showItem = !$scope.showItem;
};
}]);
Hope this helps