Monday, June 23, 2014

How to Access $scope Variable Outside AngularJs Controller

Recently I was working with AngularJs and there was a requirement to call a AngularJs controller function forcefully from other events.  So for that we have to access $scope variable of a controller. This short blog is about accessing $scope variable.

In AngularJs all the scopes are bound to DOM so to access $scope first we have to get the HTML element. You can either use jQuery selectors to get elements or you can use standard document.getElementById method. For example.

var scope= angular.element($(".classselector")[0]).scope();

This gives you the scope of the the element. Once you have the scope you can call respective method of controller.  There is also other way to find out the scope if you don't have reference to element. You can find scope by name of controller.

var scope = angular.element($('[ng-controller=myController]')).scope();

After you make changes to variables of scope you have to call apply method so the AngularJs framework is notified about changes.

scope.$apply();

Hope this helps you.


Saturday, June 21, 2014

AngularJs Communicate Between Directives and Controllers

Hello,

Recently in one of my project we were using AngularJs and created a directive for timepicker where user can enter timer in hh:mm AM/PM format. Now on one of the HTML form we have a button. When the button is clicked we have to disable the input for the timepicker. For that we have to access scope of directive from scope of AngularJs controller so that se can disable the respective field. In this blog I am going to explain how to do this.

AngularJs allows you to create directives with isolated scope which has some binding to parent scope. Bindings are defined by specifying attributes in HTML.  In some cases it may not be good as it's hard to synchronize both the scopes. So ideally parent and directive scope should be maintained separately. Better way to communicate between directives and controllers is through directive attributes. Let's see and example.  I have defined my HTML as follow for my timepicker directive.

<timepicker is-not-open="notOpen" hour-step="1" minute-step="30" show-meridian="true"></timepicker>

As you can see above is-not-open is the attribute defined for directive and it is bind to notOpen variable in my controller.

$scope.notOpen = false;

Now lets see how to mention attribute in directive scope.

angular.module('ui.bootstrap.timepicker', [])
.directive('timepicker', ['timepickerConfig', function (timepickerConfig) {
  return {
    restrict: 'EA',
    require:'?^ngModel',
    replace: true,
    scope: { isNotOpen: "=" },
    templateUrl: 'template/timepicker/timepicker.html',
    link: function(scope, element, attrs, ngModel) {
     
    }
  };
}]);

As you can see in above code we have defined attribute with scope: { isNotOpen: "=" }. Now you can define a function to watch this variable in directives. For example there is a method in parent controller which sets notOpen variable to true.

$scope.setNotOpenStatus = function(){
      $scope.notOpen = true;
}

Once it is set here, the directive is notified about the change and as I mentioned you can keep watch on the attribute.

scope.$watch('isNotOpen', function (newValue, oldValue) {
          if(newValue == true){
              //do something
          }
});

Same way you can have watch function in parent controller which would be notified if attribute value is changed inside directive.

Hope this helps you.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Introduction to Swift - the latest programming language from Apple

So Apple stunned all the developers around the globe by introducing new language instead of new iPhones, iPhones or iWatches. Let's see what exactly is the Swift.



Apple says the following about the release of Swift:

"Swift is a powerful new programming language for iOS and OS X® that makes it easier than ever for developers to create incredible apps. Designed for Cocoa® and Cocoa Touch®, Swift combines the performance and efficiency of compiled languages with the simplicity and interactivity of popular scripting languages. By design, Swift helps developers write safer and more reliable code by eliminating entire categories of common programming errors, and coexists with Objective-C® code, so developers can easily integrate Swift into their existing apps. Xcode® Playgrounds make writing Swift code incredibly interactive by instantly displaying the output of Swift code."

Swift code can live right besides C and Objective-C code in the same app. The syntax is quite similar to JavaScript. Here are some of the features of it.


  • Closures (similar to blocks in C and Objective-C) unified with function pointers
  • Tuples and multiple return values
  • Generics
  • Fast and concise iteration over a range or collection
  • Structs that support methods, extensions, protocols.
  • Functional programming patterns, e.g.: map and filter

Here is the first lesson of Swift. How to define a variable and a constant. Constants and variables must be defined before they are used. You can define constants with let keyword and variable with var keyword. For example

let maximumLoginAttemptsAllowed = 10
var currentLoginAttempt = 0

So here is a constant maximumLoginAttemptsAllowed which has a value 10 and a variable currentLoginAttempt which has value 0.