Can angularJS manage multiple transclusions inclusion? - angularjs

I am trying to make a transitive transclusion, or call it “directive inception”.
I made this example to illustrate what I am trying to do:
http://plnkr.co/edit/0hFFHknDps2krtK1D9ud?p=preview
The directive “first” wraps the directive “second” in its template and the two of them use transclusion.
What I want to do is to bind a value from a controller to the html that is a child of the “first” directive.
So I wanted my example to display:
<h1>Chained transclusions test</h1>
<div>
<h2>First directive</h2>
<div>
<h2>Second directive</h2>
<div>Controller hello</div>
</div>
</div>
Obviously that is not what I got.
I tried to analyze the scope with the developer tool and I was surprised by the result scope tree:
the result trees
I thought angularJS would create a new scope when using the transclude feature in a directive. And that this scope would be a non isolate sibling of my directive isolate scope. But I cannot see any sibling of my first directive scope (although it uses transclude). Plus, every children of my “first” directive has a scope isolated from the controller scope since the “first” directive scope is an isolated one.
I don’t understand the behavior here.
Is the transclude inclusion completely forbidden in angularJS ?
Is it possible to create a directive with transclusion, that wraps another directive that uses transclusion ?
It seems to me that this is the whole power behind web components, the fact that transclusion or any other special caracteristics should be seen as “implementation detail”, and the component should be able to use other directives that hide their own implementation details.

Without getting into the details of scope creation when using isolate scope with transclusion... it is possible to nest transclusions, but in your example, you need to make scope.controllerMsg available to the first directive's isolate scope:
JS:
app.directive('first', function(){
return {
...
scope: { controllerMsg: '=text'},
...
}
});
HTML:
<first text="controllerMsg">
{{controllerMsg}}
</first>
Demo

Related

Function never called in an AngularJS directive controller

I am facing a strange situation in which I have created a directive, to which a controller is attached, and one of the two tiny functions of the controller is never called from the view whereas the other function is.
Here is the plunker.
The message I expect is (bold is what does not show up)
You are limited to: Prison
I have already created tens of directives, whether in their own right or as wrappers around existing directives available on GitHub, from lightweight ones such as custom-select to behemoths such as angular-ui-grid.
I am at the end of my wits here as to why {{getArea()}} produces no text at all in the view. I've scrutinized the code, trying to do it with new eyes, so to speak, and I see nothing wrong. I've created a specific project in Eclipse for this tiny piece of code, installed Wampserver just so I could set breakpoints in Firebug and God knows to what great lengths I had to go just so that I could understand what is wrong with the code I wrote.
For instance, in isRestricted(), I can call getArea() without any problem. However, Angular seems to not find the function from the directive.
A few similar questions have already been asked but none of the errors (missing controller or ng-app specification, missing dependency list at module declaration, nested controllers, etc.) seem to apply. There's obviously an important lesson to be learned here and I'm truly eager to learn it.
EDIT: The lesson learned is that ng-if creates a new scope. That new scope comes in between the controller and the directive, which leads to the template of the directive losing access to anything defined in the controller (at least, that's how I would phrase it). (Note that a comment hinted at directive priority.)
There are several solutions, which all maintain the prototypical inheritance needed for the template to access the functions defined in the controller:
not using an isolate scope
not defining the ng-if directive on the top-level element of my directive, as that causes a conflict (between my controller's scope and the scope defined by ng-if). I believe ng-if wins here, which leads to the controller's scope being out of reach of the directive. Using ng-if on a child div does the trick (because then, the ng-if scope inherits my controller's scope, hence making the functions available to the template).
Because of the CSS styling needed with this directive, I have used scope: false.
<span class="scoop-badge-content">{{$parent.getArea()}}</span>
Or in directive :
scope:true
This is because ng-if use how own scope
The strange thing is that when i have this problem i usually use dot notation. But it doesn't work here, probably because we're inside a directive, and i didn't had the case until now.
EDIT : a last way of doing this chaging the template :
<div class="scoop-badge scoop-badge-ua">
<div ng-if="isRestricted()">
<span class="scoop-badge-title">You are limited to:</span>
<span class="scoop-badge-content">{{getArea()}}</span>
</div>
</div>
I think this work because you have replace true and ng-if will conflict with ng-scope if it's on the top DOM element.
When you have scope = {} in your directive, Angular creates an isolated scope. Which means it can't get to the getArea() function.
You can completely remove the scope = {} line or set it to scope = true or scope = false depending on what you're trying to achieve later on.
When set to scope = true Angular will create a new scope object and assign it to the directive. This scope object is prototypically inherited from its parent scope.
When set to scope = false the directive will use its parent scope. (This is the default value. It has the same effect if you remove this line).
More information about scopes here
Removing scope: {} from directive definition solves problem.
app.directive('scoopBadgeUa', function() {
return {
restrict : "A",
scope: {}, // This is not needed, creates conflict
templateUrl : "scoop-badge-ua.html",
replace : true,
controller : 'ScoopBadgeUaController',
};
});
Your code is correct, you don't have to do anything more than adding a <div></div> wrapping your code in scoop-badge-ua.html.
<div>
<div class="scoop-badge scoop-badge-ua" ng-class="{'visible': isRestricted()}" ng-if="isRestricted()">
<span class="scoop-badge-title">You are limited to:</span>
<span class="scoop-badge-content">{{getArea()}}</span>
</div>
</div>
I like this solution better than transclude: true because it doesn't include the directive's tag in your html code, which ultimately translates to a cleaner code.

Can't understand which scope will be associated with DOM node

When you attach any controller to DOM node, for example,
<div ng-controller="myController">{{testProperty}}</div>
controller scope will be associated with this DOM node.
Imagine another example. We created directive myDirective, which has its own isolated scope. Now we have
<div ng-controller="myController" myDirective>{{testProperty}}</div>
Which scope will be associated with DOM node in this case? Scope of controller or directive? And last example, we have one more directive mySecondDirective with its own isolated
scope
<div myDirective mySecondDirective>{{testProperty}}</div>
Which scope will be associated with DOM node in this case? Scope of myDirective or mySecondDirective? And can you explain why?
<div myDirective mySecondDirective>{{testProperty}}</div>
for multiple directives defined on a single DOM element, you can explicitly define a priority: - see this: https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/service/$compile#directive-definition-object
<div ng-controller="myController" myDirective>{{testProperty}}</div>
Which scope will be associated with DOM node in this case? Scope of
controller or directive?
for controller's $scope and a directive's scope defined on a single DOM element: "The transclude option changes the way scopes are nested. It makes it so that the contents of a transcluded directive have whatever scope is outside the directive, rather than whatever scope is on the inside. In doing so, it gives the contents access to the outside scope." from the angularjs docs found here: https://docs.angularjs.org/guide/directive#creating-a-directive-that-wraps-other-elements
Thanks, but all of you are wrong. As I found out it is not possible to create two or more scopes on one DOM node. Angular throws this error:
Error: [$compile:multidir] Multiple directives [pTest2, pTest] asking for new/isolated scope on: <p-test p-test2="">

Can we link two controllers to a single custom directive

I tried to find linking of multiple controllers to a single custom directive, but no solution. Is this possible to achieve or not. Can anybody please tell me.
Requirement: I created a directive with a controller. I'm calling that directive in a page and the page is having its own controller. Now the page controller have a couple of functions. I'm using a template with some events. Those events are implemented in the page controller (parent controller). So those functions are not firing.
<div ng-controller="controllername">
<myDirective name-"name" event="doSomeEvent(params)"/>
In the controller i have a couple of functions like
app.controller("controllername",['$scope','function($scope))
{
$scope.functionName = function()
{
alert(1);
}]
}
This function is linked to the directive template. How to make this event fired?
my guess is that your directive has got an isolated scope.
meaning you have in your directive definition a line with scope: {}.
that makes it isolated and it can't see the parent scope (meaning that controller 'controllername' you have there)
remove the scope definition from the directive (remove the scope: {}) and you will have access to the parent scope.
and you will be able to use those function as if they were in the directive scope.

Why ng-hide doesn't work with custom directives?

I'm reading the directives section of the developers guide on angularjs.org to refresh my knowledge and gain some insights and I was trying to run one of the examples but the directive ng-hide is not working on a custom directive.
Here the jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/D3Nsk/:
<my-dialog ng-hide="dialogIsHidden" on-close="hideDialog()">
Does Not Work Here!!!
</my-dialog>
<div ng-hide="dialogIsHidden">
It works Here.
</div>
Any idea on why this is happening?
Solution
Seems that the variable dialogIsHidden on the tag already make a reference
to a scope variable inside the directive and not to the variable in the controller; given
that the directive has it's own insolated scope, to make this work it's necesary to pass
by reference the variable dialogIsHidden of the controller to the directive.
Here the jsfiddle:
http://jsfiddle.net/h7xvA/
changes at:
<my-dialog
ng-hide="dialogIsHidden"
on-close="hideDialog()" dialog-is-hidden='dialogIsHidden'>
and:
scope: {
'close': '&onClose',
'dialogIsHidden': '='
},
You're creating an isolated scope inside your directive when asigning an object to scope. This is why $scope.dialogIsHidden is not passed through to the directive and thus the element is not being hided.
Kain's suggested adjustment for the fiddle with using $parent illustrates this.
your can change the
<my-dialog ng-hide="dialogIsHidden" on-close="hideDialog()">
to
<my-dialog ng-hide="$parent.dialogIsHidden" on-close="hideDialog()">

How to use ng-show on a directive that has an isolated scope

I have a directive that I use like this:
<dir model="data"></dir>
The directive has an isolated scope.
scope :{
model:'='
}
Now I'm trying to use ng-show on that directive using another attribute of my page's $scope, like this:
<dir ng-show="show" model="data"></dir>
But it's not working because the directive is trying to find the show attribute on its own scope.
I don't want the directive to know about the fact that its container might choose to hide it.
The workaround I found is to wrap the directive in a <div> and apply ng-show on that element, but I don't like the extra element this forces me to use:
<div ng-show="show" >
<dir model="data"></dir>
</div>
Is there a better way of doing this?
See this plunker: http://plnkr.co/edit/Q3MkWfl5mHssUeh3zXiR?p=preview
Update: This answer applies to Angular releases prior to 1.2. See #lex82's answer for Angular 1.2.
Because your dir directive creates an isolate scope, all directives defined on the same element (dir in this case) will use that isolate scope. This is why ng-show looks for property show on the isolate scope, rather than on the parent scope.
If your dir directive is truly a standalone/self-contained/reusable component, and therefore it should use an isolate scope, your wrapping solution is probably best (better than using $parent, IMO) because such directives should normally not be used with other directives on the same element (or you get exactly this kind of problem).
If your directive doesn't need an isolate scope, your problem goes away.
You could consider migrating to Angular 1.2 or higher. The isolate scope is now only exposed to directives with a scope property. This means the ng-show is not influenced by your directive anymore and you can write it exactly like you tried to do it in the first place:
<dir ng-show="show" model="data"></dir>
#Angular-Developers: Great work, guys!
Adding the following into the link function solves the problem. It's an extra step for the component creator, but makes the component more intuitive.
function link($scope, $element, attr, ctrl) {
if (attr.hasOwnProperty("ngShow")) {
function ngShow() {
if ($scope.ngShow === true) {
$element.show();
}
else if($scope.ngShow === false) {
$element.hide();
}
}
$scope.$watch("ngShow", ngShow);
setTimeout(ngShow, 0);
}
//... more in the link function
}
You'll also need to setup scope bindings for ngShow
scope: {
ngShow: "="
}
Simply use $parent for the parent scope like this:
<dir ng-show="$parent.show" model="data"></dir>
Disclaimer
I think that this is the precise answer to your question but I admit that it is not perfect from an aesthetical point of view. However, wrapping the <div> isn't very nice either. I think one can justify it because from the other parameter passed to the isolate scope, it can be seen that the directive actually has an isolate scope. On the other hand, I have to acknowledge that i regularly forget the $parent in the first place and then wonder why it is not working.
It would certainly be clearer to add an additional attribute is-visible="expression" and insert the ng-show internally. But you stated in your question that you tried to avoid this solution.
Update: Won't work in Angular 1.2 or higher.

Resources