Question

31

AngularJS Directive with default options

rated 0 times [ 34] [ 3] / answers: 1 / hits: 88470 / 11 Years ago, fri, september 13, 2013, 12:00:00

I'm just starting with AngularJS, and am working on converting a few old jQuery plugins to Angular directives. I'd like to define a set of default options for my (element) directive, which can be overridden by specifying the option value in an attribute.

I've had a look around for the way others have done this, and in the angular-ui library the ui.bootstrap.pagination seems to do something similar.

First all default options are defined in a constant object:

.constant('paginationConfig', {

  itemsPerPage: 10,

  boundaryLinks: false,

  ...

})

Then a getAttributeValue utility function is attached to the directive controller:

this.getAttributeValue = function(attribute, defaultValue, interpolate) {

    return (angular.isDefined(attribute) ?

            (interpolate ? $interpolate(attribute)($scope.$parent) :

                           $scope.$parent.$eval(attribute)) : defaultValue);

};

Finally, this is used in the linking function to read in attributes as

.directive('pagination', ['$parse', 'paginationConfig', function($parse, config) {

    ...

    controller: 'PaginationController',

    link: function(scope, element, attrs, paginationCtrl) {

        var boundaryLinks = paginationCtrl.getAttributeValue(attrs.boundaryLinks,  config.boundaryLinks);

        var firstText = paginationCtrl.getAttributeValue(attrs.firstText, config.firstText, true);

        ...

    }

});

This seems like a rather complicated setup for something as standard as wanting to replace a set of default values. Are there any other ways to do this that are common? Or is it normal to always define a utility function such as getAttributeValue and parse options in this way? I'm interested to find out what different strategies people have for this common task.

Also, as a bonus, I'm not clear why the interpolate parameter is required.

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mckinleykeyshawnb

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2 Years ago

answered 11 Years ago amari · Accepted Answer

You can use compile function - read attributes if they are not set - fill them with default values.

.directive('pagination', ['$parse', 'paginationConfig', function($parse, config) {

    ...

    controller: 'PaginationController',

    compile: function(element, attrs){

       if (!attrs.attrOne) { attrs.attrOne = 'default value'; }

       if (!attrs.attrTwo) { attrs.attrTwo = 42; }

    },

        ...

  }

});