Related
When using ui-router in Angular JS, what dependencies can be injected into onEnter callbacks? Specifically, I want to use the $http service and a constant defined in the parent module. The code I am working with defines ui-router states in module config; I know I cannot use services in config code, but maybe it's ok to use them in callbacks defined by config code? At any rate, the following code seems to work; I am just worried it may not be reliable. I guess
the real question is, when are dependencies injected? Does this happen at the time that a function is defined, or at the time that a function is called?
angular.module('sim', ['ui-router']).
constant('ENV', {
BASE_URL: '/simulation/secure'
}).
config(config);
function config($stateProvider) {
$stateProvider
.state('root.training', {
url: '/training',
controller: 'trainingCtrl',
onEnter: function($http,ENV)
{
$http.get(ENV.BASE_URL + '/setIsRunning');
}
});
};
The dependencies are injected when the function is called. Looking at the source code of ui-router, the onEnter-callback is called during a state transition, when the transition is considering entering. The call to the onEnter-callback is done using Angulars $injector.invoke() function, which resolves any dependencies in the $injector and invokes the method, as per the angular documentation. So pretty much any dependency should be valid to use in onEnter.
First of all, this is an honest question. And I'm looking for honest and justified answers on why I shouldn't be doing this...
angular
.module('X', ['Y'])
.config(function (myFactoryProvider, myServiceProvider) {
myFactoryProvider.$get().myFn();
myServiceProvider.$get().myFn();
});
angular
.module('Y', [])
.factory('myFactory', ['$location', function ($location) {
return {
myFn: function () {
console.log('factory');
console.log($location.absUrl());
}
}
}])
.service('myService', ['$location', function ($location) {
this.myFn = function () {
console.log('service');
console.log($location.absUrl());
}
}]);
Here's a JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/1vetnu6o/
This is working as you can see above and it solves a few problems for me. But I shouldn't probably be doing this and I want to understand why. I really need good reasons to not do this. Despite the fact that I really want to.
tl;dr;
Here's the context of the problem...
I have this internal framework used by multiple products where there's this one service (which happens to be a factory) that basically contains a group of related helper methods. In this case device related like isMobileDevice, isAndroid, getDeviceType (with returns mobile, tablet or desktop), and few others...
This service must be injected into the config() phase of the application using the framework because we need access to the getDeviceType function. The thing is, we need to get the deviceType to load proper templates with $routeProvider. It's in the config() phase that we are building the correct template paths to be used for all the routes. Some of them depend on the deviceType, while others have a generic template independent of the device.
Since this is a service, we cannot inject it directly into the config() phase but we can call that method using the technique I mentioned earlier in the post.
How I'm currently solving this? The helper service is actually a provider and all the methods are exposed both in the provider section as well as in the factory function. Not ideal, but it works. I consider this a work-around, but I'd rather have a work-around in the application and not the framework, thus the technique first mentioned.
Thoughts?
I didn't knew but actually you can invoke on config phase.
The problem is that myService will be instantiated twice :/
angular
.module('X', [])
.config(function(myServiceProvider) {
myServiceProvider.$get().myFn();
})
.run(function(myService) {
myService.myFn();
})
.service('myService', ['$location', function($location) {
console.log('myService!');
this.myFn = function() {
console.log($location.absUrl());
}
}]);
output:
"myService!"
"location"
"myService!"
"location"
This is dangerous if you call $get on config of a service that has a big nested dependency tree :/
I think the correct approach, if you need a utility service (with no dependency), is to use a constant (in this way you can inject it everywhere). Otherwise if you need dependencies use a service and stick to the run() block.
The config() block it's the place to instruct your services how they should work with the help of their providers.
The run() block it's the perfect place to do some logic when your app starts (aka main method).
I was wondering what the best moment is while initializing the app to retrieve data from:
1 - a REST service
2 - $routeParams
to define application wide constant.
config phase only accepts providers and during the config / run phase $routeParams properties are undefined.
This seems like somewhat in the right direction:
Can you pass parameters to an AngularJS controller on creation?
Also: how to define a constant within a controller, is that possible?
app.controller('MainCtrl', function($scope) {
//define app.constant here
}
--edit: typo
During run phase all the providers should be initialized and working correctly, you can use the $http service to retrieve what ever parameters are needed for you.
I am pretty sure the $routeParams are initialized at run phase as well.
Defining constants in a controller isn't a good practice (in my opinion), if they are unique to that controller then they are just variables, and if you want real application wide constants, use a service, that's what they are for :)
I know of one easy way to pass parameters to controllers on creation, which is using the angular ui router project: https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router
In the resolve function you can do http calls if necessary, inject constants etc, it's very handy and personally I never build an angular project without it.
I am pretty sure there are more ways, but usually the best practice to pass data between controllers is using a service.
On a side note, if you have a piece of data that is common to more than 1 controller, the easiest way is to put that data on a service and do a watch on that service return value, for example, say I have isLoggedIn, which can change at any moment and a lot of controllers will want to be notified about it, use a UserService and watch for it's value:
UserService.isLoggedIn = function() {
return _isLoggedIn;
}
And in your Controller:
$scope.$watch(function() {
return UserService.isLoggedIn();
}, doSomeAction);
I hope this helps!
This http://www.jvandemo.com/how-to-resolve-angularjs-resources-with-ui-router/ seems like a nice guide, basically, you add the resolve to the state:
.state("customers", {
url : "/customers",
templateUrl: 'customers.html',
resolve: {
//any value you want, this function should return a promise,
//only when that promise is resolved, it will instantiate the controller
//Make sure however you add some signal that something is happening because
//while fetching it can seem like the page is not responding
customers: ['$http', 'anyOtherServiceYouMightNeed', function($http, otherService){
//return a promise
return $http.get('api/customers');
}],
//and for constant
constants: ['ConfigService', function(config) {
return config.appConstants;
}]
},
//customersCtrl will have customers resolved already
controller : 'customersCtrl'
});
app.controller('customersCtrl', ['$scope', 'customers', 'constants',
function($scope, customers, consts) {
//customers will be ready and resolved when the controller is instantiated
//you can do this with anything you might need inside a controller
}
I have a problem where i'm initialising a variable on the scope in a controller. Then it gets changed in another controller when a user logs in. This variable is used to control things such as the navigation bar and restricts access to parts of the site depending on the type of user, so its important that it holds its value. The problem with it is that the controller that initialises it, gets called again by angular some how and then resets the variable back to its initial value.
I assume this is not the correct way of declaring and initialising global variables, well its not really global, so my question is what is the correct way and is there any good examples around that work with the current version of angular?
You've got basically 2 options for "global" variables:
use a $rootScope http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng.$rootScope
use a service http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/services
$rootScope is a parent of all scopes so values exposed there will be visible in all templates and controllers. Using the $rootScope is very easy as you can simply inject it into any controller and change values in this scope. It might be convenient but has all the problems of global variables.
Services are singletons that you can inject to any controller and expose their values in a controller's scope. Services, being singletons are still 'global' but you've got far better control over where those are used and exposed.
Using services is a bit more complex, but not that much, here is an example:
var myApp = angular.module('myApp',[]);
myApp.factory('UserService', function() {
return {
name : 'anonymous'
};
});
and then in a controller:
function MyCtrl($scope, UserService) {
$scope.name = UserService.name;
}
Here is the working jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/pkozlowski_opensource/BRWPM/2/
If you just want to store a value, according to the Angular documentation on Providers, you should use the Value recipe:
var myApp = angular.module('myApp', []);
myApp.value('clientId', 'a12345654321x');
Then use it in a controller like this:
myApp.controller('DemoController', ['clientId', function DemoController(clientId) {
this.clientId = clientId;
}]);
The same thing can be achieved using a Provider, Factory, or Service since they are "just syntactic sugar on top of a provider recipe" but using Value will achieve what you want with minimal syntax.
The other option is to use $rootScope, but it's not really an option because you shouldn't use it for the same reasons you shouldn't use global variables in other languages. It's advised to be used sparingly.
Since all scopes inherit from $rootScope, if you have a variable $rootScope.data and someone forgets that data is already defined and creates $scope.data in a local scope you will run into problems.
If you want to modify this value and have it persist across all your controllers, use an object and modify the properties keeping in mind Javascript is pass by "copy of a reference":
myApp.value('clientId', { value: 'a12345654321x' });
myApp.controller('DemoController', ['clientId', function DemoController(clientId) {
this.clientId = clientId;
this.change = function(value) {
clientId.value = 'something else';
}
}];
JSFiddle example
Example of AngularJS "global variables" using $rootScope:
Controller 1 sets the global variable:
function MyCtrl1($scope, $rootScope) {
$rootScope.name = 'anonymous';
}
Controller 2 reads the global variable:
function MyCtrl2($scope, $rootScope) {
$scope.name2 = $rootScope.name;
}
Here is a working jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/natefriedman/3XT3F/1/
In the interest of adding another idea to the wiki pool, but what about AngularJS' value and constant modules? I'm only just starting to use them myself, but it sounds to me like these are probably the best options here.
Note: as of the time of writing, Angular 1.3.7 is the latest stable, I believe these were added in 1.2.0, haven't confirmed this with the changelog though.
Depending on how many you need to define, you might want to create a separate file for them. But I generally define these just before my app's .config() block for easy access. Because these are still effectively modules, you'll need to rely on dependency injection to use them, but they are considered "global" to your app module.
For example:
angular.module('myApp', [])
.value('debug', true)
.constant('ENVIRONMENT', 'development')
.config({...})
Then inside any controller:
angular.module('myApp')
.controller('MainCtrl', function(debug, ENVIRONMENT), {
// here you can access `debug` and `ENVIRONMENT` as straight variables
})
From the initial question is actually sounds like static properties are required here anyway, either as mutable (value) or final (constant). It's more my personal opinion than anything else, but I find placing runtime configuration items on the $rootScope gets too messy, too quickly.
// app.js or break it up into seperate files
// whatever structure is your flavor
angular.module('myApp', [])
.constant('CONFIG', {
'APP_NAME' : 'My Awesome App',
'APP_VERSION' : '0.0.0',
'GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ID' : '',
'BASE_URL' : '',
'SYSTEM_LANGUAGE' : ''
})
.controller('GlobalVarController', ['$scope', 'CONFIG', function($scope, CONFIG) {
// If you wish to show the CONFIG vars in the console:
console.log(CONFIG);
// And your CONFIG vars in .constant will be passed to the HTML doc with this:
$scope.config = CONFIG;
}]);
In your HTML:
<span ng-controller="GlobalVarController">{{config.APP_NAME}} | v{{config.APP_VERSION}}</span>
localStorage.username = 'blah'
If you're guaranteed to be on a modern browser. Though know your values will all be turned into strings.
Also has the handy benefit of being cached between reloads.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but when Angular 2.0 is released I do not believe$rootScope will be around. My conjecture is based on the fact that $scope is being removed as well. Obviously controllers, will still exist, just not in the ng-controller fashion.Think of injecting controllers into directives instead. As the release comes imminent, it will be best to use services as global variables if you want an easier time to switch from verison 1.X to 2.0.
You can also use the environment variable $window so that a global variable declare outside a controller can be checked inside a $watch
var initWatch = function($scope,$window){
$scope.$watch(function(scope) { return $window.globalVar },
function(newValue) {
$scope.updateDisplayedVar(newValue);
});
}
Becareful, the digest cycle is longer with these global values, so it is not always real-timed updated. I need to investigate on that digest time with this configuration.
I just found another method by mistake :
What I did was to declare a var db = null above app declaration and then modified it in the app.js then when I accessed it in the controller.js
I was able to access it without any problem.There might be some issues with this method which I'm not aware of but It's a good solution I guess.
Try this, you will not force to inject $rootScope in controller.
app.run(function($rootScope) {
$rootScope.Currency = 'USD';
});
You can only use it in run block because config block will not provide you to use service of $rootScope.
It's actually pretty easy. (If you're using Angular 2+ anyway.)
Simply add
declare var myGlobalVarName;
Somewhere in the top of your component file (such as after the "import" statements), and you'll be able to access "myGlobalVarName" anywhere inside your component.
You can also do something like this ..
function MyCtrl1($scope) {
$rootScope.$root.name = 'anonymous';
}
function MyCtrl2($scope) {
var name = $rootScope.$root.name;
}
I have a problem where i'm initialising a variable on the scope in a controller. Then it gets changed in another controller when a user logs in. This variable is used to control things such as the navigation bar and restricts access to parts of the site depending on the type of user, so its important that it holds its value. The problem with it is that the controller that initialises it, gets called again by angular some how and then resets the variable back to its initial value.
I assume this is not the correct way of declaring and initialising global variables, well its not really global, so my question is what is the correct way and is there any good examples around that work with the current version of angular?
You've got basically 2 options for "global" variables:
use a $rootScope http://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng.$rootScope
use a service http://docs.angularjs.org/guide/services
$rootScope is a parent of all scopes so values exposed there will be visible in all templates and controllers. Using the $rootScope is very easy as you can simply inject it into any controller and change values in this scope. It might be convenient but has all the problems of global variables.
Services are singletons that you can inject to any controller and expose their values in a controller's scope. Services, being singletons are still 'global' but you've got far better control over where those are used and exposed.
Using services is a bit more complex, but not that much, here is an example:
var myApp = angular.module('myApp',[]);
myApp.factory('UserService', function() {
return {
name : 'anonymous'
};
});
and then in a controller:
function MyCtrl($scope, UserService) {
$scope.name = UserService.name;
}
Here is the working jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/pkozlowski_opensource/BRWPM/2/
If you just want to store a value, according to the Angular documentation on Providers, you should use the Value recipe:
var myApp = angular.module('myApp', []);
myApp.value('clientId', 'a12345654321x');
Then use it in a controller like this:
myApp.controller('DemoController', ['clientId', function DemoController(clientId) {
this.clientId = clientId;
}]);
The same thing can be achieved using a Provider, Factory, or Service since they are "just syntactic sugar on top of a provider recipe" but using Value will achieve what you want with minimal syntax.
The other option is to use $rootScope, but it's not really an option because you shouldn't use it for the same reasons you shouldn't use global variables in other languages. It's advised to be used sparingly.
Since all scopes inherit from $rootScope, if you have a variable $rootScope.data and someone forgets that data is already defined and creates $scope.data in a local scope you will run into problems.
If you want to modify this value and have it persist across all your controllers, use an object and modify the properties keeping in mind Javascript is pass by "copy of a reference":
myApp.value('clientId', { value: 'a12345654321x' });
myApp.controller('DemoController', ['clientId', function DemoController(clientId) {
this.clientId = clientId;
this.change = function(value) {
clientId.value = 'something else';
}
}];
JSFiddle example
Example of AngularJS "global variables" using $rootScope:
Controller 1 sets the global variable:
function MyCtrl1($scope, $rootScope) {
$rootScope.name = 'anonymous';
}
Controller 2 reads the global variable:
function MyCtrl2($scope, $rootScope) {
$scope.name2 = $rootScope.name;
}
Here is a working jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/natefriedman/3XT3F/1/
In the interest of adding another idea to the wiki pool, but what about AngularJS' value and constant modules? I'm only just starting to use them myself, but it sounds to me like these are probably the best options here.
Note: as of the time of writing, Angular 1.3.7 is the latest stable, I believe these were added in 1.2.0, haven't confirmed this with the changelog though.
Depending on how many you need to define, you might want to create a separate file for them. But I generally define these just before my app's .config() block for easy access. Because these are still effectively modules, you'll need to rely on dependency injection to use them, but they are considered "global" to your app module.
For example:
angular.module('myApp', [])
.value('debug', true)
.constant('ENVIRONMENT', 'development')
.config({...})
Then inside any controller:
angular.module('myApp')
.controller('MainCtrl', function(debug, ENVIRONMENT), {
// here you can access `debug` and `ENVIRONMENT` as straight variables
})
From the initial question is actually sounds like static properties are required here anyway, either as mutable (value) or final (constant). It's more my personal opinion than anything else, but I find placing runtime configuration items on the $rootScope gets too messy, too quickly.
// app.js or break it up into seperate files
// whatever structure is your flavor
angular.module('myApp', [])
.constant('CONFIG', {
'APP_NAME' : 'My Awesome App',
'APP_VERSION' : '0.0.0',
'GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ID' : '',
'BASE_URL' : '',
'SYSTEM_LANGUAGE' : ''
})
.controller('GlobalVarController', ['$scope', 'CONFIG', function($scope, CONFIG) {
// If you wish to show the CONFIG vars in the console:
console.log(CONFIG);
// And your CONFIG vars in .constant will be passed to the HTML doc with this:
$scope.config = CONFIG;
}]);
In your HTML:
<span ng-controller="GlobalVarController">{{config.APP_NAME}} | v{{config.APP_VERSION}}</span>
localStorage.username = 'blah'
If you're guaranteed to be on a modern browser. Though know your values will all be turned into strings.
Also has the handy benefit of being cached between reloads.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but when Angular 2.0 is released I do not believe$rootScope will be around. My conjecture is based on the fact that $scope is being removed as well. Obviously controllers, will still exist, just not in the ng-controller fashion.Think of injecting controllers into directives instead. As the release comes imminent, it will be best to use services as global variables if you want an easier time to switch from verison 1.X to 2.0.
You can also use the environment variable $window so that a global variable declare outside a controller can be checked inside a $watch
var initWatch = function($scope,$window){
$scope.$watch(function(scope) { return $window.globalVar },
function(newValue) {
$scope.updateDisplayedVar(newValue);
});
}
Becareful, the digest cycle is longer with these global values, so it is not always real-timed updated. I need to investigate on that digest time with this configuration.
I just found another method by mistake :
What I did was to declare a var db = null above app declaration and then modified it in the app.js then when I accessed it in the controller.js
I was able to access it without any problem.There might be some issues with this method which I'm not aware of but It's a good solution I guess.
Try this, you will not force to inject $rootScope in controller.
app.run(function($rootScope) {
$rootScope.Currency = 'USD';
});
You can only use it in run block because config block will not provide you to use service of $rootScope.
It's actually pretty easy. (If you're using Angular 2+ anyway.)
Simply add
declare var myGlobalVarName;
Somewhere in the top of your component file (such as after the "import" statements), and you'll be able to access "myGlobalVarName" anywhere inside your component.
You can also do something like this ..
function MyCtrl1($scope) {
$rootScope.$root.name = 'anonymous';
}
function MyCtrl2($scope) {
var name = $rootScope.$root.name;
}