ngModel.NgModelController

Methods

• $render();

  Called when the view needs to be updated. It is expected that the user of the ng-model directive will implement this method.

  The $render() method is invoked in the following situations:

  • $rollbackViewValue() is called. If we are rolling back the view value to the last committed value then $render() is called to update the input control.
  • The value referenced by ng-model is changed programmatically and both the $modelValue and the $viewValue are different from last time.

  Since ng-model does not do a deep watch, $render() is only invoked if the values of $modelValue and $viewValue are actually different from their previous values. If $modelValue or $viewValue are objects (rather than a string or number) then $render() will not be invoked if you only change a property on the objects.

• $isEmpty(value);

  This is called when we need to determine if the value of an input is empty.

  For instance, the required directive does this to work out if the input has data or not.

  The default $isEmpty function checks whether the value is undefined, '', null or NaN.

  You can override this for input directives whose concept of being empty is different from the default. The checkboxInputType directive does this because in its case a value of false implies empty.

  Parameters

  Param	Type	Details
  value	*	The value of the input to check for emptiness.

  Returns

  boolean

  True if value is "empty".

• $setValidity(validationErrorKey, isValid);

  Change the validity state, and notify the form.

  This method can be called within $parsers/$formatters or a custom validation implementation. However, in most cases it should be sufficient to use the ngModel.$validators and ngModel.$asyncValidators collections which will call $setValidity automatically.

  Parameters

  Param	Type	Details
  validationErrorKey	string	Name of the validator. The validationErrorKey will be assigned to either $error[validationErrorKey] or $pending[validationErrorKey] (for unfulfilled $asyncValidators), so that it is available for data-binding. The validationErrorKey should be in camelCase and will get converted into dash-case for class name. Example: myError will result in ng-valid-my-error and ng-invalid-my-error class and can be bound to as {{someForm.someControl.$error.myError}} .
  isValid	boolean	Whether the current state is valid (true), invalid (false), pending (undefined), or skipped (null). Pending is used for unfulfilled $asyncValidators. Skipped is used by Angular when validators do not run because of parse errors and when $asyncValidators do not run because any of the $validators failed.

• $setPristine();

  Sets the control to its pristine state.

  This method can be called to remove the ng-dirty class and set the control to its pristine state (ng-pristine class). A model is considered to be pristine when the control has not been changed from when first compiled.

• $setDirty();

  Sets the control to its dirty state.

  This method can be called to remove the ng-pristine class and set the control to its dirty state (ng-dirty class). A model is considered to be dirty when the control has been changed from when first compiled.

• $setUntouched();

  Sets the control to its untouched state.

  This method can be called to remove the ng-touched class and set the control to its untouched state (ng-untouched class). Upon compilation, a model is set as untouched by default, however this function can be used to restore that state if the model has already been touched by the user.

• $setTouched();

  Sets the control to its touched state.

  This method can be called to remove the ng-untouched class and set the control to its touched state (ng-touched class). A model is considered to be touched when the user has first focused the control element and then shifted focus away from the control (blur event).

• $rollbackViewValue();

  Cancel an update and reset the input element's value to prevent an update to the $modelValue, which may be caused by a pending debounced event or because the input is waiting for a some future event.

  If you have an input that uses ng-model-options to set up debounced updates or updates that depend on special events such as blur, you can have a situation where there is a period when the $viewValue is out of sync with the ngModel's $modelValue.

  In this case, you can use $rollbackViewValue() to manually cancel the debounced / future update and reset the input to the last committed view value.

  It is also possible that you run into difficulties if you try to update the ngModel's $modelValue programmatically before these debounced/future events have resolved/occurred, because Angular's dirty checking mechanism is not able to tell whether the model has actually changed or not.

  The $rollbackViewValue() method should be called before programmatically changing the model of an input which may have such events pending. This is important in order to make sure that the input field will be updated with the new model value and any pending operations are cancelled.

• $validate();

  Runs each of the registered validators (first synchronous validators and then asynchronous validators). If the validity changes to invalid, the model will be set to undefined, unless ngModelOptions.allowInvalid is true. If the validity changes to valid, it will set the model to the last available valid $modelValue, i.e. either the last parsed value or the last value set from the scope.

• $commitViewValue();

  Commit a pending update to the $modelValue.

  Updates may be pending by a debounced event or because the input is waiting for a some future event defined in ng-model-options. this method is rarely needed as NgModelController usually handles calling this in response to input events.

• $setViewValue(value, trigger);

  Update the view value.

  This method should be called when a control wants to change the view value; typically, this is done from within a DOM event handler. For example, the input directive calls it when the value of the input changes and select calls it when an option is selected.

  When $setViewValue is called, the new value will be staged for committing through the $parsers and $validators pipelines. If there are no special ngModelOptions specified then the staged value sent directly for processing, finally to be applied to $modelValue and then the expression specified in the ng-model attribute. Lastly, all the registered change listeners, in the $viewChangeListeners list, are called.

  In case the ngModelOptions directive is used with updateOn and the default trigger is not listed, all those actions will remain pending until one of the updateOn events is triggered on the DOM element. All these actions will be debounced if the ngModelOptions directive is used with a custom debounce for this particular event. Note that a $digest is only triggered once the updateOn events are fired, or if debounce is specified, once the timer runs out.

  When used with standard inputs, the view value will always be a string (which is in some cases parsed into another type, such as a Date object for input[date].) However, custom controls might also pass objects to this method. In this case, we should make a copy of the object before passing it to $setViewValue. This is because ngModel does not perform a deep watch of objects, it only looks for a change of identity. If you only change the property of the object then ngModel will not realize that the object has changed and will not invoke the $parsers and $validators pipelines. For this reason, you should not change properties of the copy once it has been passed to $setViewValue. Otherwise you may cause the model value on the scope to change incorrectly.

  In any case, the value passed to the method should always reflect the current value of the control. For example, if you are calling $setViewValue for an input element, you should pass the input DOM value. Otherwise, the control and the scope model become out of sync. It's also important to note that $setViewValue does not call $render or change the control's DOM value in any way. If we want to change the control's DOM value programmatically, we should update the ngModel scope expression. Its new value will be picked up by the model controller, which will run it through the $formatters, $render it to update the DOM, and finally call $validate on it.

  Parameters

  Param	Type	Details
  value	*	value from the view.
  trigger	string	Event that triggered the update.

Properties

• $viewValue

  *	The actual value from the control's view. For input elements, this is a String. See ngModel.NgModelController for information about when the $viewValue is set.

• $modelValue

  *	The value in the model that the control is bound to.

• $parsers

  Array.<Function>

  Array of functions to execute, as a pipeline, whenever the control reads value from the DOM. The functions are called in array order, each passing its return value through to the next. The last return value is forwarded to the $validators collection. Parsers are used to sanitize / convert the $viewValue. Returning undefined from a parser means a parse error occurred. In that case, no $validators will run and the ngModel will be set to undefined unless ngModelOptions.allowInvalid is set to true. The parse error is stored in ngModel.$error.parse.

• $formatters

  Array.<Function>

  Array of functions to execute, as a pipeline, whenever the model value changes. The functions are called in reverse array order, each passing the value through to the next. The last return value is used as the actual DOM value. Used to format / convert values for display in the control. function formatter(value) { if (value) { return value.toUpperCase(); } } ngModel.$formatters.push(formatter);

• $validators

  Object.<string, function>

  A collection of validators that are applied whenever the model value changes. The key value within the object refers to the name of the validator while the function refers to the validation operation. The validation operation is provided with the model value as an argument and must return a true or false value depending on the response of that validation. ngModel.$validators.validCharacters = function(modelValue, viewValue) { var value = modelValue || viewValue; return /[0-9]+/.test(value) && /[a-z]+/.test(value) && /[A-Z]+/.test(value) && /\W+/.test(value); };

• $asyncValidators

  Object.<string, function>

  A collection of validations that are expected to perform an asynchronous validation (e.g. a HTTP request). The validation function that is provided is expected to return a promise when it is run during the model validation process. Once the promise is delivered then the validation status will be set to true when fulfilled and false when rejected. When the asynchronous validators are triggered, each of the validators will run in parallel and the model value will only be updated once all validators have been fulfilled. As long as an asynchronous validator is unfulfilled, its key will be added to the controllers $pending property. Also, all asynchronous validators will only run once all synchronous validators have passed. Please note that if $http is used then it is important that the server returns a success HTTP response code in order to fulfill the validation and a status level of 4xx in order to reject the validation. ngModel.$asyncValidators.uniqueUsername = function(modelValue, viewValue) { var value = modelValue || viewValue; // Lookup user by username return $http.get('/api/users/' + value). then(function resolved() { //username exists, this means validation fails return $q.reject('exists'); }, function rejected() { //username does not exist, therefore this validation passes return true; }); };

• $viewChangeListeners

  Array.<Function>

  Array of functions to execute whenever the view value has changed. It is called with no arguments, and its return value is ignored. This can be used in place of additional $watches against the model value.

• $error

  Object

  An object hash with all failing validator ids as keys.

• $pending

  Object

  An object hash with all pending validator ids as keys.

• $untouched

  boolean

  True if control has not lost focus yet.

• $touched

  boolean

  True if control has lost focus.

• $pristine

  boolean

  True if user has not interacted with the control yet.

• $dirty

  boolean

  True if user has already interacted with the control.

• $valid

  boolean

  True if there is no error.

• $invalid

  boolean

  True if at least one error on the control.

• $name

  string

  The name attribute of the control.

This example shows how to use NgModelController with a custom control to achieve data-binding. Notice how different directives (contenteditable, ng-model, and required) collaborate together to achieve the desired result.

contenteditable is an HTML5 attribute, which tells the browser to let the element contents be edited in place by the user.

We are using the $sce service here and include the $sanitize module to automatically remove "bad" content like inline event listener (e.g. <span onclick="...">). However, as we are using $sce the model can still decide to provide unsafe content if it marks that content using the $sce service.