how to defer a method execution in a directive in angularjs - angularjs

Question

I'm writing a directive which recives a function as a parameter, the directive executes and run whatever is contained into the function.
the use case is:
the directive contains a link
when the user click the link the method passed as a parameter (from the controller) is executed
when the user hit the click button a spinner will show
the spinner will hide when the execution of the method is finished
my question is how can I defer the execution and bind it to a promise, to hide the spinner after the method execution.
for illustration purposes I have used $timeout that counts from 3 to 1, please take a look to the code I've done so far:
app.directive('toogleTextLink', function($compile,$q) {
return {
restrict: 'AE',
scope: { callback: "&targetMethod" },
template: '<div><a style="cursor: pointer" ><b>{{text}}</b></a>show value= {{show}} <br/><div ng-class="{previewLoader: show}"></div></div>',
link: function (scope, element, attr) {
scope.value = attr.value;
scope.show = false;
scope.$watch('value', function () {
if (scope.value) {
scope.text = "yes";
} else {
scope.text = "no";
}
});
element.bind('click', function () {
scope.show = true;
scope.value = !scope.value;
scope.$digest();
if (scope.callback) {
var deferred = $q.defer(scope.callback());
deferred.promise.then(function () {
scope.show = false;
console.log("then called");
});
}
});
}
};
});
app.controller('myCtrl', function($scope,$timeout,$q) {
$scope.IsFacebookConnected = false;
$scope.countDown = 3;
$scope.authSocial = function(value, socialNetwork) {
switch (socialNetwork) {
case "facebook":
$scope.IsFacebookConnected = !value;
}
runCounter = function() {
$scope.countDown -= 1;
if ( $scope.countDown > 0)
$timeout(runCounter, 1000);
console.log("timer");
};
runCounter();
};
});
this is the plunker as well.

Answer 1

Andy Joslin wrote a "promise tracker" which does exactly what you need. It even has some sugar for $http integration. Basically you add "promises" to it, and it tells you the execution state. You can then bind that execution state to ng-show on something like a loading spinner animation. https://github.com/ajoslin/angular-promise-tracker and here's a demo: http://plnkr.co/edit/3uAe0NdXLz1lCYlhpaMp?p=preview
Your code will look something like:
$scope.tracker = promiseTracker("socialtracker");
$scope.tracker.addPromise(somePromise);
And in your view:
<div ng-show="tracker.active()">Loading...</div>