First, your success() handler just returns the data, but that's not returned to the caller of getData() since it's already in a callback. $http is an asynchronous call that returns a $promise, so you have to register a callback for when the data is available.

I'd recommend looking up Promises and the $q library in AngularJS since they're the best way to pass around asynchronous calls between services.

For simplicity, here's your same code re-written with a function callback provided by the calling controller:

var myApp = angular.module('myApp',[]);



myApp.service('dataService', function($http) {

    delete $http.defaults.headers.common['X-Requested-With'];

    this.getData = function(callbackFunc) {

        $http({

            method: 'GET',

            url: 'https://www.example.com/api/v1/page',

            params: 'limit=10, sort_by=created:desc',

            headers: {'Authorization': 'Token token=xxxxYYYYZzzz'}

        }).success(function(data){

            // With the data succesfully returned, call our callback

            callbackFunc(data);

        }).error(function(){

            alert(error);

        });

     }

});



myApp.controller('AngularJSCtrl', function($scope, dataService) {

    $scope.data = null;

    dataService.getData(function(dataResponse) {

        $scope.data = dataResponse;

    });

});

Now, $http actually already returns a $promise, so this can be re-written:

var myApp = angular.module('myApp',[]);



myApp.service('dataService', function($http) {

    delete $http.defaults.headers.common['X-Requested-With'];

    this.getData = function() {

        // $http() returns a $promise that we can add handlers with .then()

        return $http({

            method: 'GET',

            url: 'https://www.example.com/api/v1/page',

            params: 'limit=10, sort_by=created:desc',

            headers: {'Authorization': 'Token token=xxxxYYYYZzzz'}

         });

     }

});



myApp.controller('AngularJSCtrl', function($scope, dataService) {

    $scope.data = null;

    dataService.getData().then(function(dataResponse) {

        $scope.data = dataResponse;

    });

});

Finally, there's better ways to configure the $http service to handle the headers for you using config() to setup the $httpProvider. Checkout the $http documentation for examples.