I'm new to AngularJS and having a hard time wrapping my head around the conceptual model.
Let's say I want to have an object hierarchy to model a stash repository: Projects contain Repositories contain Tags. Do I create one app, one module and multiple controllers? (Can a module have multiple controllers?) Separate app per object type? Separate module per object type?
All the various data types will be populated by making REST API queries. Read-only for now. Does that change things?
Also, why are they called controllers? They seem to be models. As far as I can tell the controller is actually the AngularJS plumbing.
Here is my rather simple explanation:
A module is just simply a container for all the bits and pieces of your app (services, controllers, directives, filters etc).
Your application may contain different modules - some that you wrote and other third party ones, such as ngGrid for example.
You define a module like this:
var myAppModule = angular.module('myApp', []);
A controller is where the business logic of your application resides. The controller may handle the model, but it is not the model.
The AngularJS documentation for controllers states:
Use controllers to:
Set up the initial state of the $scope object. Add behavior to the
$scope object.
I break up my controllers in to the logical functions that they are supposed to handle. For example, I've written an app to help with combat tracking in a tabletop RPG. I have a controller that handles martial combat and another that handles magick. I also have another controller that helps with the characters. All these controllers are part of my combat app.
I only have one service that is responsible for querying a REST API to retrieve stats and results from a database.
The AngularJS documentation has improved a lot recently and I would recommend reading through it to give you a rough idea of how things work together!
In your example, I'd have a separate controller for each of Projects, Repositories and Tags. I'd have a service to query your datatypes. These would be grouped as part of one module/app.
Related
I've been reading up a more in depth about angularjs directive and controller, what should be in one and the other. The situation is this, I have multiple people with their types -> policemen, medicine, lawyers ... etc. inside the admin panel app, where the admin can manage them. In one section the admin can create, edit, delete them. The current versions controller does almost all the work: UI (bringing up the right form, hiding the other forms...), and logic (deleting, creating, updating methods for each person type). As I understand this is not good, because the controller does multiple things (no single responsibility). And even further the controller should only bind values to scope.
But does that mean, that I should only pull all the people (inside controller) and pass it some master directive which will manage it all? Or should their be more directives inside directives to divide the responsibility?
And if so, the controller will have to use the same service as the directive/directives. Controller for pulling people from back-end) and the directive/directives (for creating/updating/deleting) is this DRY?
Without code it's hard to give a precise answer, but the general idea when working with angular is this:
Controller: The controller is responsible for keeping the views up to date with all the changes that are happening throughout your app. This means that it should not contain the business logic, this logic should instead be separated into small services. Each handling different parts of the logic for your app.
Service: As stated above, a service should contain your business logic. Meaning that heavy calculations, manipulations etc. should be put into a service. Since services are singletons you can easily inject this service anywhere and re-use the logic within it, something you cannot do if you've put your logic inside a controller.
Directives: Like controllers, directives shouldn't have any business logic in them. Directives are only there to create re-useable functionality as well as giving you a place to handle direct DOM changes. DOM changes should never be done anywhere but from within a directive.
To answer this:
And if so, the controller will have to use the same service as the directive/directives. Controller for pulling people from back-end) and the directive/directives (for creating/updating/deleting) is this DRY?
If you have the data bound to a controller, you should not necessarily need a directive to handle the CRUD operations. Since the data is bound to the controller, you can easily create a template which reacts to the data changes automatically using ng-repeat, ng-if and so on.
I create a project structure of a web-app with angular.
I create my directories with services, controllers and views.
Then, my team ask me: where are the models? (Nobody of us have worked with angular)
And I answered that in the service, because is where the data persist.
But Im no really sure, and I cant find useful info about this.
What you are looking for is a factory provider. You can create a factory with a collection inside, and this "class" has operations to handle the collection and sincronize it with the back-end.
See this example:
https://github.com/AngularClass/angular-websocket/blob/master/README.md
You can see how to create a collection and initialize it with data that comes from a websocket.
Aditionally you can create operations to handle the collection
This could be consider a "model" in angular.
It is a best practice to keep business logic in Services (and not in controllers, for example). This is, among other reasons, because controllers are instantiated for each view and Services are singeltons.
You can refer to those great posts for more details:
https://johnpapa.net/sharing-data-in-an-angular-controller-or-an-angular-service/
http://teropa.info/blog/2014/10/24/how-ive-improved-my-angular-apps-by-banning-ng-controller.html
https://toddmotto.com/rethinking-angular-js-controllers/
I'm going to assume from the verbiage you've used that you're referring to Angular 1.x.
Services are typically used by controllers to pull data from a provider not displayed in the view. The provider can be a public api, a static file on your own server, a mongo database, etc.
A model for a controller represents the data being manipulated between the view and the controller (refer to ngModel).
I would like to know when does it make sense to use multiple controllers on the same page in angularjs. Also, when should one think about separating a controller into multiple controllers?
You should largely have your functionality in providers (services or factories typically) and your controllers should have very little in them aside from getting the providers injected (and exposing models and functions for use in the view) and possibly some view specific functionality (configuration for directives used only in one place etc.). You can have multiple controllers on the page if you decide to build the views within a page to be portable.
If you have one controller that shares the functionality needed for disparate parts of a page and later decide to move one part of the view to another route/state/view then you'll need to piece apart the controller. I don't think there are any hard rules really but if your controller is more than 100 lines you're probably making it responsible for too much and should "promote" some things to be handled by providers and/or start splitting things up a bit more.
The answer would be dependent on your page requirement. Having multiple controllers can easily be done.. But issues pop-up when you wanted to have page flows.
Controllers are just a part of AngularJS.. Usage of services, factories and filters is a recommended way of splitting your code along with controllers. If multiple controllers per page becomes imperative.. try utilizing directives. Also consider using Views provider by UI router.
I use multiple controllers when my page has got multiple pop-ups with complex functionality and i want separate controllers for them so that logic behind each-pop is in its own controller.
Similarly, I create separate controllers for sidebars and header and footers on the same page.
These are few examples which comes in my mind when using multiple controllers on same page makes sense.
But as others have mentioned, you should use providers and services/factory for splitting your code.
I am trying to understand singleton pattern.
I write a lot of code in angular and recently I wanted to refactor some of my code and move it to a common place which can be shared by different controllers.So I moved all common utils to my services.
Now the documentation over here says that angular services are singletons but I want to understand the reason behind having singleton pattern here ? Why not have multiple instances of the service object instead of passing references to controllers ?
It all falls in the name "Service". Service, acts like a medium to communicate between controllers or even directives for that matter. Not only for communication, you can add a set of utility functions in your service, which can be used throughout the module/app. This does not need to have multiple instances to serve the purpose. Hence, singleton.
Angular services are the recommended way to exchange data and communicate between controllers. In order therefore to allow this data exchange, services are singleton objects which means that you are guaranteed to have the same service reference between all your controllers.
As an example, imagine that you have an Angular application that displays a list of messages received from another user in the center of the page, as well as the number of received messages or new message notifications in the header. The header and the page content will most probably be under different scopes and be handled by different controllers. In order for these two controllers to have the same view of messages received and be able to display them consistently they will need to use a singleton object holding this information. This object is an Angular service.
I have been reading a lot of docs, and I'm getting more and more confused.
I basically can't figure out the difference between a
service
directive
module
I see a lot of custom components. Sometimes they're using directives, sometimes services. It always starts with a module. Can someone explain with an example what the difference is between these three types?
From my own personal notes (mostly snippets from the docs, google group posts, and SO posts):
Modules
provide a way to namespace/group services, directives, filters, configuration information and initialization code
help avoid global variables
are used to configure the $injector, allowing the things defined by the module (or the whole module itself) to be injected elsewhere (Dependency Injection stuff)
Angular modules are not related to CommonJS or Require.js. As opposed to AMD or Require.js modules, Angular modules don't try to solve the problem of script load ordering or lazy script fetching. These goals are orthogonal and both module systems can live side by side and fulfill their goals (so the docs claim).
Services
are singletons, so there is only one instance of each service you define. As singletons, they are not affected by scopes, and hence can be accessed by (shared with) multiple views/controllers/directives/other services
You can (and probably should) create custom services when
two or more things need access to the same data (don't use root scope) or you just want to neatly encapsulate your data
you want to encapsulate interactions with, say, a web server (extend $resource or $http in your service)
Built-in services start with '$'.
To use a service, dependency injection is required on the dependent (e.g., on the controller, or another service, or a directive).
Directives (some of the items below say essentially the same thing, but I've found that sometimes a slightly different wording helps a lot)
are responsible for updating the DOM when the state of the model changes
extend HTML vocabulary = teach HTML new tricks. Angular comes with a built in set of directives (e.g., ng-* stuff) which are useful for building web applications but you can add your own such that HTML can be turned into a declarative Domain Specific Language (DSL). E.g., the <tabs> and <pane> elements on the Angular home page demo "Creating Components".
Non-obvious built-in directives (because they don't start with "ng"): a, form, input, script, select, textarea. Under Angular, these all do more than normal!
Directives allow you to "componentize HTML". Directives are often better than ng-include. E.g., when you start writing lots of HTML with mainly data-binding, refactor that HTML into (reusable) directives.
The Angular compiler allows you to attach behavior to any HTML element or attribute and even create new HTML elements or attributes with custom behavior. Angular calls these behavior extensions directives.
When you boil it all down, a directive is just a function which executes when the Angular compiler encounters it in the DOM.
A directive is a behavior or DOM transformation which is triggered by a presence of an attribute, an element name, a class name, or a name in a comment. Directive is a behavior which should be triggered when specific HTML constructs are encountered in the (HTML) compilation process. The directives can be placed in element names, attributes, class names, as well as comments.
Most directives are restricted to attribute only. E.g., DoubleClick only uses custom attribute directives.
see also What is an angularjs directive?
Define and group Angular things (dependency injection stuff) in modules.
Share data and wrap web server interaction in services.
Extend HTML and do DOM manipulation in directives.
And make Controllers as "thin" as possible.
Think of a module as being a place to wire up a number of other things, such as directives, services, constants etc. Modules can be injected into other modules giving you a high level of reuse.
When writing an angular app, you would have a top-level module which is your application code (without templates).
Services are mainly a way to communicate between controllers, but you can inject one service into another. Services are often used as a way to get to your data stores and people will wrap the angular APIs, such as ngResource. This technique is useful since it makes testing (particularly mocking) quite easy. You can have services for doing other things like authentication, logging etc.
Directives are used for creating widgets or wrapping existing things like jquery plugins. Wrapping existing plugins can be a challenge and the reason you would do this is to establish a two-way data binding between the plugins and angular. If you don't need two-way data binding then you don't need to wrap them.
A directive is also a place for doing DOM manipulation, catching DOM-events etc. You should not be doing DOM-related stuff in controllers or services. Creating directives can get pretty complex. IMHO, I recommend first looking at API for something that can do what you are looking for OR ask Angular's Google Group for advice.