Preserve traditional anchor behavior with ng-include - angularjs

I am not building a single-page application, but rather a "traditional" site that uses AngularJS in places. I've hit the following problem (using 1.3.0-beta.6):
Standard, working anchor links:
Link text
... [page content]
<a id="foo"></a>
<h1>Headline</h1>
[more content]
That works fine. Now I introduce a template partial somewhere:
<script type="text/ng-template" id="test-include.html">
<p>This text is in a separate partial and inlcuded via ng-include.</p>
</script>
which is invoked via:
<div ng-include="'test-include.html'"></div>
The partial is included properly, but the anchor link no longer works. Clicking on "Link text" now changes the displayed URL to /#/foo rather than /#foo and the page position does not change.
My understanding is that using ng-include implicitly tells Angular that I want to use the routes system and overrides the browser's native anchor link behavior. I've seen recommendations to work around this by changing my html anchor links to #/#foo, but I can't do that for other reasons.
I don't intend to use the routes system - I just want to use ng-include without it messing with browser behavior. Is this possible?

The reason is that angular overrides the behavior of standard HTML tags which include <a> also. I'm not sure when this change happened because angular v1.0.1 works fine with this.
You should replace the href attribute with ngClick as:
<a ng-click="scroll()">Link text</a>
And in a controller so:
function MyCtrl($scope, $location, $anchorScroll) {
$scope.scroll = function() {
$location.hash('foo');
$anchorScroll();
};
};
Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/HB7LU/3261/show/
Or simply use double hash as:
<a href='##foo'>Link text</a>
Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/HB7LU/3262/show/
Update: I did not know that you want no modification in HREF. But you can still achieve the desired result by overriding the existing a directive as:
myApp.directive('a', function() {
return {
restrict: 'E',
link: function(scope, element) {
element.attr('href', '#' + element.attr('href'));
}
};
});
Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/HB7LU/3263/

My understanding is that using ng-include implicitly tells Angular
that I want to use the routes system and overrides the browser's
native anchor link behavior. I've seen recommendations to work around
this by changing my html anchor links to #/#foo, but I can't do that
for other reasons.
Routing system is defined in a separate module ngRoute, so if you did not injected it on your own - and I am pretty sure you did not - it is not accessible at all.
The issue is somehow different here.
ng-include depends on: $http, $templateCache, $anchorScroll, $animate, $sce. So make use of ng-include initiate all these services.
The most natural candidate to investigate would be $anchorScroll. The code of $anchorScroll does not seem to do any harm, but the service depends on $window, $location, $rootScope. The line 616 of $location says:
baseHref = $browser.baseHref(), // if base[href] is undefined, it defaults to ''
So basically the base href is set to '', if it was no set before.
Now look HERE - from BalusC answer :
As to using named anchors like , with the tag
you're basically declaring all relative links relative to it,
including named anchors. None of the relative links are relative to
the current request URI anymore (as would happen without the
tag).
How to mitigate the issue?
I do not have much time today, so cannot test it myself, but what I would try to check as the first option is to hook up to '$locationChangeStart' event and if the new url is of #xxxxxx type just prevent the default behaviour and scroll with $anchorScroll native methods instead.
Update
I think this code should do the work:
$scope.$on("$locationChangeStart", function (event, next, current) {
var el, elId;
if (next.indexOf("#")>-1) {
elId = next.split("#")[1];
el = document.getElementById(elId);
if(el){
// el.scrollIntoView(); do not think we need it
window.location.hash = "#" + elId;
event.preventDefault();
}
}
});

This is the best solution, and works in recent versions of Angular:
Turn off URL manipulation in AngularJS

A lot late to the party but I found that adding a simple target="_self" fixes it.
Link

Rather than applying the angular application to the entire page, you can isolate the application to just the places you want to perform an ng-include. This will allow links outside the scope of the application to retain their normal functionality, while allowing links within the application to be handled as desired.
See this plunkr:
http://plnkr.co/edit/hOB7ixRM39YZEhaz0tfr?p=preview
The plunkr shows a link outside the app that functions as normal, and a link within the app that is handled using an overriding a directive to restore normal functionality. HTML5 mode is enabled to retain 'standard' URLs (rather than 'hashbang' [without the bang!] URLs).
You could equally run the whole of the page within the app, but I thought it would be worth demonstrating how to isolate angular to certain parts of the page in any case.

Related

AngularJS: Anchor links (for external visitors, not internal) [duplicate]

Is it possible to use anchor links with Angularjs?
I.e.:
Top
Middle
Bottom
<div name="top"></div>
...
<div name="middle"></div>
...
<div name="bottom"></div>
Thank you
There are a few ways to do this it seems.
Option 1: Native Angular
Angular provides an $anchorScroll service, but the documentation is severely lacking and I've not been able to get it to work.
Check out http://www.benlesh.com/2013/02/angular-js-scrolling-to-element-by-id.html for some insight into $anchorScroll.
Option 2: Custom Directive / Native JavaScript
Another way I tested out was creating a custom directive and using el.scrollIntoView().
This works pretty decently by basically doing the following in your directive link function:
var el = document.getElementById(attrs.href);
el.scrollIntoView();
However, it seems a bit overblown to do both of these when the browser natively supports this, right?
Option 3: Angular Override / Native Browser
If you take a look at http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/dev_guide.services.$location and its HTML Link Rewriting section, you'll see that links are not rewritten in the following:
Links that contain target element
Example: link
So, all you have to do is add the target attribute to your links, like so:
Go to inpage section
Angular defaults to the browser and since its an anchor link and not a different base url, the browser scrolls to the correct location, as desired.
I went with option 3 because its best to rely on native browser functionality here, and saves us time and effort.
Gotta note that after a successful scroll and hash change, Angular does follow up and rewrite the hash to its custom style. However, the browser has already completed its business and you are good to go.
I don't know if that answers your question, but yes, you can use angularjs links, such as:
<a ng-href="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/{{hash}}"/>
There is a good example on the AngularJS website:
http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng.directive:ngHref
UPDATE: The AngularJS documentation was a bit obscure and it didn't provide a good solution for it. Sorry!
You can find a better solution here: How to handle anchor hash linking in AngularJS
You could try to use anchorScroll.
Example
So the controller would be:
app.controller('MainCtrl', function($scope, $location, $anchorScroll, $routeParams) {
$scope.scrollTo = function(id) {
$location.hash(id);
$anchorScroll();
}
});
And the view:
Scroll to #foo
...and no secret for the anchor id:
<div id="foo">
This is #foo
</div>
$anchorScroll is indeed the answer to this, but there's a much better way to use it in more recent versions of Angular.
Now, $anchorScroll accepts the hash as an optional argument, so you don't have to change $location.hash at all. (documentation)
This is the best solution because it doesn't affect the route at all. I couldn't get any of the other solutions to work because I'm using ngRoute and the route would reload as soon as I set $location.hash(id), before $anchorScroll could do its magic.
Here is how to use it... first, in the directive or controller:
$scope.scrollTo = function (id) {
$anchorScroll(id);
}
and then in the view:
Text
Also, if you need to account for a fixed navbar (or other UI), you can set the offset for $anchorScroll like this (in the main module's run function):
.run(function ($anchorScroll) {
//this will make anchorScroll scroll to the div minus 50px
$anchorScroll.yOffset = 50;
});
I had the same problem, but this worked for me:
<a ng-href="javascript:void(0);#tagId"></a>
Works for me:
<a onclick='return false;' href="" class="collapsed" role="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-parent="#accordion" ng-href="#profile#collapse{{$index}}"> blalba </a>
You need to only add target="_self" to your link
ex. Services<div id="services"></div>
Or you could simply write:
ng-href="\#yourAnchorId"
Please notice the backslash in front of the hash symbol
If you are using SharePoint and angular then do it like below:
<a ng-href="{{item.LinkTo.Url}}" target="_blank" ng-bind="item.Title;" ></a>
where
LinkTo and Title is SharePoint Column.
The best choice to me was to create a directive to do the work, because $location.hash() and
$anchorScroll() hijack the URL creating lots of problems to my SPA routing.
MyModule.directive('myAnchor', function() {
return {
restrict: 'A',
require: '?ngModel',
link: function(scope, elem, attrs, ngModel) {
return elem.bind('click', function() {
//other stuff ...
var el;
el = document.getElementById(attrs['myAnchor']);
return el.scrollIntoView();
});
}
};
});
You can also Navigate to HTML id from inside controller
$location.hash('id_in_html');

Angular Directive not executing on UI Bootstrap Modal open

I have a one-page site that I am building out and this is my first time using Angular on a site. Building it on top of Laravel too for the backend but that is beyond the scope of this question.
I need to be able to open a modal on a main page view which will add a new resource (e.g. a new client) or edit a resource. I want to somehow get the form's html inside the modal body when the $uibModal.open()'s controller is called and set the $scope.modalBody equal to the injected items.modalBody (the only way this works is if I use:
$scope.modalBody = $sce.trustAsHtml(items.modalBody);
The only problem now is that anything inside the HTML body, Angular will not use it's magic and do any data-binding. It is still in the raw form of
{{ object.property }} or since I'm using Laravel and avoiding conflict with the Blade template engine:
<% object.property %>
See screenshot:
screenshot
I have been banging my head against the wall on this one...I have tried putting $scope.$apply() in my directive and my controller, neither of which worked. I have a feeling that is the source of my problem though. I have also tried making the html just a <new-client></new-client> directive and using templateUrl: 'views/clients/add.php' which would be ideal, but the template is not being included inside the <new-client></new-client>.
I'm using ui-bootstrap 0.14.3 and Angular 1.4.8.
Could this be a bug? Or am I doing something wrong? Anyone have a better way of getting a form into my modal? Let me know what code you want to see so I don't clutter this post with unnecessary code blocks.
I have come across a similar issue with using jQuery's AJAX to receive template strings and append it to a server.
So when HTML is added via jQuery, bound html string, etc., angular doesn't know it needs to automagically compile this data.
What you need to do is use the $compile service, to $compile your html and then attach the correct $scope to it:
`$compile('jQuerySelectorReturningHtmlOrAnHTMLStringThatNeedsToBeCompiled')($scope);`
There are multiple examples in Angulars Documentation for $compile that can give you an idea of what is happening. I think by what you have described the same thing is happening here in your situation.
The key is to call this $compile service function after the html has been bound to the page.
EDIT:
There are a few other options based on some comments, that will serve as a viable solution to rendering this content on your view. For example a directive that takes a string attribute representing the HTML string of your desired view.
1. Modify your directive template in the compile step:
You have the ability to modify your template before the directive compiles and binds any attributes to it, to that directives scope:
app.directive('myAwesomeCompileStepDirective', [myAwesomeCompileStepDirectivef]);
function myAwesomeCompileStepDirectiveFn() {
return {
restrict: 'EA',
compile: function compileFn(tAttrs, tElement) {
//Here you can access the attrs that are passed into your directive (aka html string)
tElement.html(tAttrs['stringThatYouWantToReplaceElementWith']);
return function linkFn(scope, element, attrs, controller, transcludeFn) {
//if all you want to do is update the template you really don't have to do anything
//here but I leave it defined anyways.
}
}
}
}
You can view a file I wrote for a npm component which uses this method to modify my directive template before it is compiled on the page & you can also view the codepen for the complete component to see it in action.
2. Use $compile service to call $compile in link function using directive attrs.
In the same way as the aforementioned method, you can instead inject the $compile service, and call the function mentioned above. This provides a bit more work, for you but more flexibility to listen to events and perform scope based functions which is not available in the compile function in option 1.

Angular directive doesn't work for elements added to the DOM by jquery plugin

I'm creating a fall back image directive that looks like this http://plnkr.co/edit/wxy4Sp2K02iXoQNsvkah
angular.module('directives').directive('myDirective', function() {
return {
restrict: 'C',
link: function(scope, element, attrs) {
console.log('linking');
}
}
});
My directive doesn't work for elements that are added to the DOM by the typeahead.js plugin (https://github.com/twitter/typeahead.js).
<div class='tt-suggestion'>
<div><span class="my-directive">bla</span></div>
</div>
I guess it's because Angular is not informed about the elements that are added by jQuery and hence it doesn't invoke the directive. How do I notify Angular of these changes?
You can use the Angular compile service to do this: http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/service/$compile
Basicly it works like this:
document.getElementById("test").innerHTML = $compile("")($scope);
ideally you shouldnt be mixing jquery and angular because they both are based on different philosophy.
jquery-- is event driven i.e. have event listeners which cause changes to model and then the programmer has to code numerous lines to change the view i.e. changing css,text etc
angular-- woo hoo! just change the model which is binded to $scope and :) your view is automatically updated
to automatically react on changing of such events angular has a compiler which studies entire html code before the app is loaded so even if there is a template which you might use later you must enclose it in so that angular compiles this so that all the special angular directive and controller perform as expected even when you remove or add templates to the dom.
here you are using typehead.js and jquery to manually manipulate the view which is against angular philosophy because when you do such maipulation angular compiler wouldnt be aware of it as it runs only when the app is initialized. Thats why before appending you should use $compile to make the angular compiler aware of this template .
in your case i would suggest the typehead present on this url
http://angular-ui.github.io/bootstrap/

Combating AngularJS executing controller twice

I understand AngularJS runs through some code twice, sometimes even more, like $watch events, constantly checking model states etc.
However my code:
function MyController($scope, User, local) {
var $scope.User = local.get(); // Get locally save user data
User.get({ id: $scope.User._id.$oid }, function(user) {
$scope.User = new User(user);
local.save($scope.User);
});
//...
Is executed twice, inserting 2 records into my DB. I'm clearly still learning as I've been banging my head against this for ages!
The app router specified navigation to MyController like so:
$routeProvider.when('/',
{ templateUrl: 'pages/home.html',
controller: MyController });
But I also had this in home.html:
<div data-ng-controller="MyController">
This digested the controller twice. Removing the data-ng-controller attribute from the HTML resolved the issue. Alternatively, the controller: property could have been removed from the routing directive.
This problem also appears when using tabbed navigation. For example, app.js might contain:
.state('tab.reports', {
url: '/reports',
views: {
'tab-reports': {
templateUrl: 'templates/tab-reports.html',
controller: 'ReportsCtrl'
}
}
})
The corresponding reports tab HTML might resemble:
<ion-view view-title="Reports">
<ion-content ng-controller="ReportsCtrl">
This will also result in running the controller twice.
AngularJS docs - ngController
Note that you can also attach controllers to the DOM by declaring it
in a route definition via the $route service. A common mistake is to
declare the controller again using ng-controller in the template
itself. This will cause the controller to be attached and executed
twice.
When you use ngRoute with the ng-view directive, the controller gets attached to that dom element by default (or ui-view if you use ui-router). So you will not need to attach it again in the template.
I just went through this, but the issue was different from the accepted answer. I'm really leaving this here for my future self, to include the steps I went through to fix it.
Remove redundant controller declarations
Check trailing slashes in routes
Check for ng-ifs
Check for any unnecessary wrapping ng-view calls (I accidentally had left in an ng-view that was wrapping my actual ng-view. This resulted in three calls to my controllers.)
If you are on Rails, you should remove the turbolinks gem from your application.js file. I wasted a whole day to discover that. Found answer here.
Initializing the app twice with ng-app and with bootstrap. Combating AngularJS executing controller twice
When using $compile on whole element in 'link'-function of directive that also has its own controller defined and uses callbacks of this controller in template via ng-click etc. Found answer here.
Just want to add one more case when controller can init twice (this is actual for angular.js 1.3.1):
<div ng-if="loading">Loading...</div>
<div ng-if="!loading">
<div ng-view></div>
</div>
In this case $route.current will be already set when ng-view will init. That cause double initialization.
To fix it just change ng-if to ng-show/ng-hide and all will work well.
Would like to add for reference:
Double controller code execution can also be caused by referencing the controller in a directive that also runs on the page.
e.g.
return {
restrict: 'A',
controller: 'myController',
link: function ($scope) { ....
When you also have ng-controller="myController" in your HTML
When using angular-ui-router with Angular 1.3+, there was an issue about Rendering views twice on route transition. This resulted in executing controllers twice, too. None of the proposed solutions worked for me.
However, updating angular-ui-router from 0.2.11 to 0.2.13 solved problem for me.
I tore my app and all its dependencies to bits over this issue (details here: AngularJS app initiating twice (tried the usual solutions..))
And in the end, it was all Batarang Chrome plugin's fault.
Resolution in this answer:
I'd strongly recommend the first thing on anyone's list is to disable it per the post before altering code.
If you know your controller is unintentionally executing more than once, try a search through your files for the name of the offending controller, ex: search: MyController through all files. Likely it got copy-pasted in some other html/js file and you forgot to change it when you got to developing or using those partials/controllers. Source: I made this mistake
I had the same problem, in a simple app (with no routing and a simple ng-controller reference) and my controller's constructor did run twice. Finally, I found out that my problem was the following declaration to auto-bootstrap my AngularJS application in my Razor view
<html ng-app="mTest1">
I have also manually bootstrapped it using angular.bootstrap i.e.
angular.bootstrap(document, [this.app.name]);
so removing one of them, it worked for me.
In some cases your directive runs twice when you simply not correct close you directive like this:
<my-directive>Some content<my-directive>
This will run your directive twice.
Also there is another often case when your directive runs twice:
make sure you are not including your directive in your index.html TWICE!
Been scratching my head over this problem with AngularJS 1.4 rc build, then realised none of the above answers was applicable since it was originated from the new router library for Angular 1.4 and Angular 2 at the time of this writing. Therefore, I am dropping a note here for anyone who might be using the new Angular route library.
Basically if a html page contains a ng-viewport directive for loading parts of your app, by clicking on a hyperlink specified in with ng-link would cause the target controller of the associated component to be loaded twice. The subtle difference is that, if the browser has already loaded the target controller, by re-clicking the same hyperlink would only invoke the controller once.
Haven't found a viable workaround yet, though I believe this behaviour is consistent with the observation raised by shaunxu, and hopefully this issue would be resolved in the future build of new route library and along with AngularJS 1.4 releases.
In my case, I found two views using the same controller.
$stateProvider.state('app', {
url: '',
views: {
"viewOne#app": {
controller: 'CtrlOne as CtrlOne',
templateUrl: 'main/one.tpl.html'
},
"viewTwo#app": {
controller: 'CtrlOne as CtrlOne',
templateUrl: 'main/two.tpl.html'
}
}
});
The problem I am encountering might be tangential, but since googling brought me to this question, this might be appropriate. The problem rears its ugly head for me when using UI Router, but only when I attempt to refresh the page with the browser refresh button. The app uses UI Router with a parent abstract state, and then child states off the parent. On the app run() function, there is a $state.go('...child-state...') command. The parent state uses a resolve, and at first I thought perhaps a child controller is executing twice.
Everything is fine before the URL has had the hash appended.
www.someoldwebaddress.org
Then once the url has been modified by UI Router,
www.someoldwebaddress.org#/childstate
...and then when I refresh the page with the browser refresh button, the $stateChangeStart fires twice, and each time points to the childstate.
The resolve on the parent state is what is firing twice.
Perhaps this is a kludge; regardless, this does appear to eliminate the problem for me: in the area of code where $stateProvider is first invoked, first check to see if the window.location.hash is an empty string. If it is, all is good; if it is not, then set the window.location.hash to an empty string. Then it seems the $state only tries to go somewhere once rather than twice.
Also, if you do not want to rely on the app's default run and state.go(...), you can try to capture the hash value and use the hash value to determine the child state you were on just before page refresh, and add a condition to the area in your code where you set the state.go(...).
For those using the ControllerAs syntax, just declare the controller label in the $routeprovider as follows:
$routeprovider
.when('/link', {
templateUrl: 'templateUrl',
controller: 'UploadsController as ctrl'
})
or
$routeprovider
.when('/link', {
templateUrl: 'templateUrl',
controller: 'UploadsController'
controllerAs: 'ctrl'
})
After declaring the $routeprovider, do not supply the controller as in the view. Instead use the label in the view.
In my case it was because of the url pattern I used
my url was like /ui/project/:parameter1/:parameter2.
I didn't need paramerter2 in all cases of state change. In cases where I didn't need the second parameter my url would be like /ui/project/:parameter1/. And so whenever I had a state change I will have my controller refreshed twice.
The solution was to set parameter2 as empty string and do the state change.
I've had this double initialisation happen for a different reason. For some route-transitions in my application I wanted to force scrolling to near the top of the page (e.g. in paginated search results... clicking next should take you to the top of page 2).
I did this by adding a listener to the $rootScope $on $viewContentLoaded which (based on certain conditions) executed
$location.hash('top');
Inadvertently this was causing my routes to be reevaluated and the controllers to be reinitialised
My issue was updating the search parameters like so $location.search('param', key);
you can read more about it here
controller getting called twice due to append params in url
In my case renaming the controller to a different name solved the problem.
There was a conflict of controller names with "angular-ui-tree" module: I renamed my controller from "CatalogerTreeController" to "TreeController" and then this controller starts to be initiated twice on the page where "ui-tree" directive used because this directive uses controller named "TreeController".
I had the same problem and after trying all the answers I finally found that i had a directive in my view that was bound to the same controller.
APP.directive('MyDirective', function() {
return {
restrict: 'AE',
scope: {},
templateUrl: '../views/quiz.html',
controller: 'ShowClassController'
}
});
After removing the directive the controller stopped being called twice. Now my question is, how can use this directive bound to the controller scope without this problem?
I just solved mine, which was actually quite disappointing. Its a ionic hybrid app, I've used ui-router v0.2.13. In my case there is a epub reader (using epub.js) which was continuously reporting "no document found" once I navigate to my books library and select any other book. When I reloaded the browser book was being rendered perfectly but when I selected another book got the same problem again.
My solve was very simple. I just removed reload:true from $state.go("app.reader", { fileName: fn, reload: true }); in my LibraryController
I have the same issue in angular-route#1.6.7, and it because the extra slash in the end of regex route:
.when('/goods/publish/:classId/', option)
to
.when('/goods/publish/:classId', option)
and it works correctly.
Just adding my case here as well:
I was using angular-ui-router with $state.go('new_state', {foo: "foo#bar"})
Once I added encodeURIComponent to the parameter, the problem was gone: $state.go('new_state', {foo: encodeURIComponent("foo#bar")}).
What happened?
The character "#" in the parameter value is not allowed in URLs. As a consequence, angular-ui-router created my controller twice: during first creation it passed the original "foo#bar", during second creation it would pass the encoded version "foo%40bar". Once I explicitly encoded the parameter as shown above, the problem went away.
My issue was really difficult to track down. In the end, the problem was occurring when the web page had missing images. The src was missing a Url. This was happening on an MVC 5 Web Controller. To fix the issue, I included transparent images when no real image is available.
<img alt="" class="logo" src="">
I figured out mine is getting called twice is because i was calling the method twice from my html.
`<form class="form-horizontal" name="x" ng-submit="findX() novalidate >
<input type="text"....>
<input type="text"....>
<input type="text"....>
<button type="submit" class="btn btn-sm btn-primary" ng-click="findX()"
</form>`
The highlighted section was causing findX() to be called twice. Hope it helps someone.

How do I target only certain elements with the same directive, without changing the markup?

I've been researching this for a few hours now.
Let's say I have a jQuery selector of $('#bottom .downloads .links a').click.....
How can I do the same type of thing in an Angular directive?
This is what I have so far and it works, but for all tags on the page.
angular.module('directives', []).directive('a', function(mongoDB){ //Don't need ['customServices'], it can just be [] to use mongoDB
return {
restrict : 'E',
link : function(scope, element, attrs){
element.on('click', function(){
//But this gets called for all links on the page
//I just want it to be links within the #bottom .downloads .links div
//I wanted to use a directive instead of ng-click="someMethod()"
});
}
});
Is there a way to target this directive to only a certain div? I guess I could change the restrict to 'C' or 'A' and add an attribute to the links, but I was wondering if I could still layout the front end like I currently am used to with my jQuery selectors.
There is a pretty significant philosophical difference between AngularJS and jQuery. In jQuery, everything is in the DOM - including your data - and you do everything through DOM transformations. AngularJS, on the other hand, has separation of concerns built in: models, views, controllers, services, etc., are all separate. We use controllers to glue code together, but each component knows nothing about the other components.
So whereas in jQuery, one might use a selector to find all links matching a certain pattern and then add a certain functionality to it (say a click handler), in AngularJS, the HTML is the "offical record". Instead of abstracting away the attachment of a click handler into a JavaScript function, it is put right into the markup:
<a ng-click="doWhatever()">Click me!</a>
In this case, doWhatever is a method on the scope for that part of the page, probably set in your controller:
$scope.doWhatever = function () {
console.log("Hello!");
}
So the way you are approaching the problem is not going to work in AngularJS. Instead, you need to look at directives not like jQuery selectors with a function, but as an extension of HTML. You ask yourself, "what does HTML not do out of the box that I need it to?" Your answer is your directive.
But AngularJS already has a built-in directive for click handlers (the ngClick used above).
Angular already has an a directive, so you probably shouldn't create your own.
In an Angular world, to "target only a certain div" (well, <a> within the div) we declaratively target that <a> with a directive, rather than use CSS-like selectors. So yes, restrict to 'A' and add an attribute to the <a> would be best:
<a ... target-this-one>...</a>
I personally think this reads better. Looking at the HTML it is clear which <a>s have special/additional functionality.
As #Josh pointed out, you would only need to do this if ng-click isn't sufficient for your needs.

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