Refreshing translations using angular-translate - angularjs

I'm using angular translate for i18n.
The particular feature I'm working on is updating the status of a book. In the service callback, if successful, I am updating my book status from, say, Open to Closed. If I view the scope (using Batarang), I can see my DOM element as such:
<span translate="Closed" class="ng-scope">Open</span>
As you can see, the translate value is being updated, but the translation itself isn't occurring on its own. I've read the docs and understand this is expected behavior. What I want to know, though, is how should I be refreshing the translated value?
Presently, I'm injecting the $translate service and executing $translate.refresh() every time I update a scope value that needs to be re-translated. I feel like that's clunky, and probably not the way I should be doing it.
Any thoughts?

You definitely should not issue a refresh for this.
just do something like this:
<span> {book.state | translate} </span>
Given that your book model has a member state to reflect it's state.
Whenever the model changes, the value of state will be re-translated.

Create a common service for translation, this will configure our translation code, in particular it will configure the location of our translation files. Create a directory src/common/translation, and a file src/common/translation/translation.js:
http://technpol.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/adding-translation-using-angular-translate-to-an-angularjs-app/
angular.module('angularTranslateApp', ['pascalprecht.translate'])
.config(function($translateProvider, $translatePartialLoaderProvider) {
$translateProvider.useLoader('$translatePartialLoader', {
urlTemplate: '/UI/assets/translation/{lang}/{part}.json'
}
});
$translateProvider.preferredLanguage('en-AU'); });

Related

Switching the data, using the same Controller AngularJS

I was wondering how to change the data, but keep the same controller in my angular app. Basically I will have a list of activities (restaurants, parks etc...) when I click on one of these activities, The view will display all the restaurant, and same thing for the parks. I know how to do that, but I would need to create a park_ctrl and a restaurant_ctrl, and since the data will be formatted the exact same way. I just wanted to know if I could use only one controller and just change the data that it receives when I click on those buttons.
I hope my question makes sense.
logic around retrieving data should be the responsibility of services, so I guess you'd just call a different service in the different cases, from the same controller
I think it's not a really good idea, but opinion based.
You can make a function :
function($scope){
$scope.changePage = function (type) {
if(type==="park"){
$scope.parks = asynLoadFunctionToGetParks();
}else{
if(type === "restaurants"){
/* same as below */
}
}
};
}
And changing the type in your view with :
<button ng-click="changePage('parks')">Parks</button>
<button ng-click="changePage('restaurants')">Restaurants</button>
<div ng-if="type==='park'">
{{parks}}
</div>
<div ng-if="type==='restaurants'">
{{restaurants}}
</div>
I think the issue here is that most of the Angular examples available are of the "hello world" variety and so they show retrieving data directly from the Controller. The problem is that AngularJS out of the box doesn't really have a business logic layer itself, and I think most people who have added such a layer are too busy to be putting up examples.
The way I'd do this is to create a "master" service that can get all of the different data types either up front in the Run block or lazily as the user navigates the app, depending on your needs. Then I'd supply a reference to the applicable sub-collection in the route resolution (resolve property) or the isolate scope in the case of a directive.
Alternatively, the controller can ask for the data by calling masterService.getCollection($scope.collectionName) or something like that, but if you do that you run into the issue that masterService may not yet have that particular collection yet and then you have to clutter up your controller with all the promise resolution stuff as if it were a Controller's responsibility to handle that.
You could avoid that by binding to masterService.collections[$scope.collectionName] in the View, which would leave the Controller only exposing the collection on the $scope or controllerAs variable and the masterService still responsible for retrieving the data and making it available.
Yes you can. Just use different service and a common variable in the scope.
if (something) {
$scope.data = restaurantsService.get();
} else {
$scope.data = parksService.get();
}

How does AngularJS handle Memory

I am wondering how AngularJS 'saves' its data/model. Does it actually save it or.. how does it work?
We are using different methods to retrieve JSON data. In other frameworks like jQuery we had to think about how to store data locally, i.e. when we want to provide a sorting possibility. In Angular this seems different, it seems to do all that for us out of the box.
Is it that Angular displays everything how it is supposed to be and looks at changes, reads in the displayed data in and then displays it differently or does it use a local storage to save the raw json.. and work from there? (This would limit the amount of data we can feed)
Here is a simple code-example:
$http.get("url-to-json")
.success(function(returnedData) {
$scope.search_result = returnedData['search_result'];
})
From there I can just use:
<div ng-repeat='result in search_results | sortResult:"price":sorted' id="res_<% result.id %>" class="result">
Product: <% result.name %>
</div>
I am riddled how Angular still knows the data and doesn't have to load it again from the external source.
Do you know?
There is a lot more that goes into it, but essentially its all stored in local memory. Angular creates an object of all your scope properties. When you do data binding in angular you are registering an event listener and when that event is called angular loops through this object detecting if something has changed, and if so updates the object accordingly. Each time an update occurs it returns to the loop to check if anything else has been updated. This is what is referred to as the $digestLoop.
SOURCE
The ng-book

Reactive non-mongo variable in angular-meteor

I couldn't find an answer or a solution to a challenge yet: How can I bind a variable (Session variable, no mongo collection) reactively in angular-meteor?
I'm converting from standalone meteor. Here I could use the template.helper method. As I can't use templates (and iron:router) anymore with angular-meteor and angularui-router, I can't bind reactivity to the helper anymore (at least in my understanding).
I tried this in an meteor-angular controller, which belongs to a sentence.tpl file:
$scope.parsestring = function(input_string){
tokenizer(input_string);
};
$scope.sentence_type = Session.getJSON("current_sentence.sentence_type");
Tokenizing works (I can see it in the debugger), but the value is only displayed, when I reload the page. What I want to achieve is tokenizing a string from an input field into a JSON representation (the tokenizer takes care of that) and displaying it similtaniously from the JSON representation in a structured way (separate html input elements, which are created dynamically). sentence_type is the variable that should be used on the html-page to show and change the sentence type, which can change while typing.
Anybody has some hints? Maybe, I could also use some Angular feature that I don't know?
Cheers,
Jan
Code repo:
My current code looks like this:
My code looks similar to this:
angular.module('ngaignt').controller("InteractorCtrl", ['$scope', '$meteor', '$meteorCollection',
function ($scope, $meteor, $meteorCollection) {
// Autorun is necessary to make reactive variables out of the JSON returns
var c = Tracker.autorun(function (comp) {
$scope.verb_type = Session.getJSON("current_verb.type");
$scope.object_type = Session.getJSON("current_object.type");
$scope.verb_attributes = _.toArray(Session.getJSON("current_verb.attributes"));
$scope.object_attributes = _.toArray(Session.getJSON("current_object.attributes"));
if (!comp.firstRun) {
// only do not do aply at first run becaulse then apply is already running.
$scope.$apply();
}
});
$scope.parsestring = function (input_string) {
interactor(input_string);
};
//$scope.on('$destroy', function () {c.stop()});
}]);
To use reactive variables, you need a reactive computation. You may need to use Tracker.autorun:
$scope.parsestring = Tracker.autorun(function(someStringInSession){
tokenizer(Session.get(someStringInSession));
});
Or you can use Tracker.autorun(func) wherever you use a reactive variable to reactively rerun a function when the variable changes.
good question and the best answer depend on your needs.
There are 2 possible solutions:
If you want to bind a Session variable to a scope variable, use the $meteorSession service.
What it does is that every time the scope variable will change, it will change to Session variable (and trigger an autorun if it's placed inside one).
and every time the Session variable will change, the scope variable will change as well (and change the view that it's placed upon).
If you are using the Session variable just to get a variable reactive (meaning trigger an autorun), you should use getReactively . this just returns the already existing scope variable but trigger an autorun every time it changes. a good example of this can be found it our tutorial.
Note: In anyway, when you use Tracker.autorun inside Angular, you need to connect it to a scope. this can be easily done if you replace Tracker.autorun with the $meteorUtils autorun function
Would be great if you could share a repo so that I can look on the broader perspective and could better determine what's the best solution from the two.
Based on another answer about "session" reacitivity, I could solve the problem. Just use the approach described in the link https://stackoverflow.com/a/21046935/4035797. You have to substitute Deps.autorun by Tracker.autorun though as Deps is deprecated and you have to make the scope variables for use in the template reactive (e.g., $scope.sentence_type = Session.getJSON("current_sentence.sentence_type");) and not the tokenizer.

not able to dynamically update the view when data is changing

I have a set of files in a server which I am looping though and constructing a JSOn and saving it as a separate file. I am using python for this. Works quite well. Now the scope is the number of files in the directory will increase/ change throughout the day..and I am running the script every 10 min to rewrite the json...the file name stays same and i am calling it in a single page html document using angular.js..Again fairly simple...But now I am having problem when the JSON is changing I am not seeing any change on the page unless I reload the page. Could I do something about this?
With angular I am using
$http('something.json').success(callback function with some argument data)
and in the markup something like
<ul>
<li ng-repeat="x in data">{{x.id}}</li>
</ul>
Your call to $http is one-time operation which happens after page load like this:
$http('something.json').success(function(data){
$scope.data = data;
});
angular is kickstarted
ng-controller containing $http request is evaluated and request for 'something.json' is sent
...
when your json arrives, your success function is called with data from json
view (html template) is updated with new data
Angular keeps your model (eg $scope.data) and UI (expressions in template) up to date, but it doesn't update external resources.
If you want to periodically poll for changes in 'something.json'
you can use $timeout service as suggested in JaKXz's comment.

AngularFire: How to update scope without syncing to Firebase (i.e. local states, like "loading" or "selected")

I'm new to Firebase and AngularJS (and AngularFire), but am managing to work most things out... however this one's stumping me.
Situation:
I've got a server and a separate frontend. The frontend has NO WRITE PERMISSIONS for Firebase - it can only read it's own data (using a token provided by the server). The server has an API which the frontend utilises to make updates.
For the frontend to request an update to a particular item in a list, it needs to provide that item's Firebase ID to the server (along with whatever other information the API needs). The server will first verify that ID and then use it to update the correct Firebase data.
I've got AngularFire doing a three-way data binding for these actions, which is awesome!
Problem:
Lets say my Firebase structure is as follows:
actions: {
-JFeuuEIFDh: { // Firebase IDs for arrays
label: "One",
.
.
.
},
-JfuDu2JC81: {
"label": "Two",
.
.
.
}
I have the following HTML:
<div ng-controller"SuperController">
<ul>
<!-- key is the Firebase ID for the action, which is
required for my server to know which object to update -->
<li ng-repeat="(key, action) in actions">
<a ng-click="doAction(key, action)">action.label</a>
<!-- **Loading IS NOT and SHOULD NOT be stored in Firebase,**
it's simply a local state which AngularJS should manage -->
<p ng-hide="!action.loading">Loading...</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
doAction looks something like this:
$scope.doAction = function(key, item) {
$scope.actions[key].loading = true;
var onComplete = function () {
$scope.actions[key].loading = false;
}
// Calls to the server, etc...
.
.
.
}
I'm using $scope.actions[key].loading to provide a local state so the "Loading..." paragraph will appear when the user initiates doAction, and disappear when the doAction logic completes.
However, because AngularFire has set up a three-way data binding, it tries to save that change to the database, which fails because the client does not have permission to write!
I don't want it to save loading to the database! It's there simply to update that paragraph's ng-hide - it shouldn't be persistent and there's no way this would justify providing write permission to the client.
So what am I supposed to do? I can't think of any way to update the scope without firing off the three-way binding... Am I thinking of this the wrong way?
EDIT
Nested deep in the AngularJS documentation, under $FirebaseObject.$bindTo, was this:
use a variable prefixed with _, which will not be saved to the server, but will trigger $watch().
However when I used $scope.actions[key]._loading instead, the same problem still occurred. There was no apparent difference.
I couldn't find a clean solution to the problem.
use a variable prefixed with _, which will not be saved to the server, but will trigger $watch().
This wasn't actually implemented in code. I was considering submitting an implementation myself but it wasn't as simple as I hoped. Even after toJSON stopped returning _'d variables, it still tried to save the (unchanged) JSON to Firebase, so you'd have to fix it earlier somehow... I didn't go there.
To solve the problem I used AngularFire's $asArray instead of $asObject. The array is READ ONLY. Firebase won't try to sync any changes unless you call special functions. In my case, this works, however in other cases it might not be sufficient.
I had to change a bit my templating to work with an array instead of an object since a numerical key was now being provided instead of the actual key being used in Firebase. I converted the numerical key to the proper one with: actions.$keyAt(parseInt(key)).
It was a mess.. but it'll get me through for now.
I am having same issue. but this seems to fix it.
https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/libraries/angular/api.html#angularfire-firebaseobject-bindtoscope-varname
If $destroy() is emitted by scope (this happens when a controller is > destroyed), then this object is automatically unbound from scope. It can > also be manually unbound using the unbind() method, which is passed into ? > the promise callback.
//Setup synced array as usual
$scope.syncedArray = $firebaseArray(ref);
//call unbind on the variable
$scope.syncedArray.unbind();
//reorder, filter and maniuplate arrays as usual and when done call .bind() on it.

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