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Ben Nadel at cf.Objective() 2014 (Bloomington, MN) with: Matt Vickers and Jonathan Dowdle and Joel Hill
Ben Nadel at cf.Objective() 2014 (Bloomington, MN) with: Matt Vickers Jonathan Dowdle Joel Hill

Directive Controller And Link Timing In AngularJS

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Published in Comments (9)

I've talked about the timing of directives in AngularJS a few times before. But, it's a rather complicated topic, so I don't mind digging a bit deeper. This time, I'm looking at the timing of directive controllers vs. directive link functions. As the DOM (Document Object Model) is compiled by AngularJS, the directive controllers and link functions execute at different parts of the compile lifecycle.

Run this demo in my JavaScript Demos project on GitHub.

When AngularJS compiles the DOM, it walks the DOM tree in a depth-first, top-down manner. As it walks down the DOM, it instantiates the directive controllers. Then, when it gets to the bottom of a local DOM tree branch, it starts linking the directives in a bottom-up manner as it walks back up the branch. This doesn't mean that all directive controllers are run before all directive linking; it simply means that in a local DOM branch, the directive controllers are instantiated before they are linked.

To see this in action, I've put together a very simple DOM tree in which each element has a unique (but almost identical) directive. As each directive controller and link function is executed, it will log to the console. This way, we can see the timing of the various methods in relation to the DOM tree structure.

<!doctype html>
<html ng-app="Demo">
<head>
	<meta charset="utf-8" />

	<title>
		Directive Controller And Link Timing In AngularJS
	</title>
</head>
<body>

	<h1>
		Directive Controller And Link Timing In AngularJS
	</h1>

	<div bn-outer>

		<p bn-mid>

			<span bn-inner>

				Woot!

			</span>

		</p>

		<p bn-second-mid>

			Woot, indeed!

		</p>

	</div>


	<!-- Load scripts. -->
	<script type="text/javascript" src="../../vendor/jquery/jquery-2.0.3.min.js"></script>
	<script type="text/javascript" src="../../vendor/angularjs/angular-1.2.4.min.js"></script>
	<script type="text/javascript">

		// Create an application module for our demo.
		var app = angular.module( "Demo", [] );


		// -------------------------------------------------- //
		// -------------------------------------------------- //


		// I demonstrate the timing of directive execution.
		app.directive(
			"bnOuter",
			function() {

				function Controller( $scope ) {

					console.log( "Outer - Controller" );

				}


				function link( $scope, element, attributes, controller ) {

					console.log( "Outer - Link" );

				}


				// Return directive configuration.
				return({
					controller: Controller,
					link: link
				});

			}
		);


		// -------------------------------------------------- //
		// -------------------------------------------------- //


		// I demonstrate the timing of directive execution.
		app.directive(
			"bnMid",
			function() {

				function Controller( $scope ) {

					console.log( "Mid - Controller" );

				}


				function link( $scope, element, attributes, controller ) {

					console.log( "Mid - Link" );

				}


				// Return directive configuration.
				return({
					controller: Controller,
					link: link
				});

			}
		);


		// -------------------------------------------------- //
		// -------------------------------------------------- //


		// I demonstrate the timing of directive execution.
		app.directive(
			"bnSecondMid",
			function() {

				function Controller( $scope ) {

					console.log( "Second Mid - Controller" );

				}


				function link( $scope, element, attributes, controller ) {

					console.log( "Second Mid - Link" );

				}


				// Return directive configuration.
				return({
					controller: Controller,
					link: link
				});

			}
		);


		// -------------------------------------------------- //
		// -------------------------------------------------- //


		// I demonstrate the timing of directive execution.
		app.directive(
			"bnInner",
			function() {

				function Controller( $scope ) {

					console.log( "Inner - Controller" );

				}


				function link( $scope, element, attributes, controller ) {

					console.log( "Inner - Link" );

				}


				// Return directive configuration.
				return({
					controller: Controller,
					link: link
				});

			}
		);

	</script>

</body>
</html>

Before we look at the console output, take note that there are two "mid" branches. This means that AngularJS has two branches to explore before it can fully walk back up to the top DOM node. That said, when we do run the above code, we get the following console log output:

Outer - Controller
Mid - Controller
Inner - Controller
Inner - Link
Mid - Link
Second Mid - Controller
Second Mid - Link
Outer - Link

As you can see, as AngularJS walks the DOM tree, it instantiates the directive controllers on the way down; then, it links the directives on the way back up.

This is an important difference. While you can only access the DOM tree in the bottom-up linking phase, the directive controller can provide a hook into the top-down lifecycle. This can be critical if you have to handle DOM events based on when elements of the DOM tree came into existence. The linking phase can never give you that because it's executed in reverse.

Want to use code from this post? Check out the license.

Reader Comments

5 Comments

This is great as usual Ben, code exploration is a blast and I'm glad you manage to find the time to do it; gives me something to look forward to reading. I'd like to mention that there are actually two linking phases, pre and post. The part you've hooked into here is the post-linking phase (ng's default) thus the bottom-up logging. This makes sense as the default because all the child elements would have been linked by the time the function is called, making it *safe to do any DOM transformations you might require. You can hook into the pre-linking phase quite easily by changing ```link: link``` to ```link: { pre: link }``` and results in an output of:

Outer - Controller
Outer - Link
Mid - Controller
Mid - Link
Inner - Controller
Inner - Link
Second Mid - Controller
Second Mid - Link

It is worth noting that you can specify both the pre and post-linking functions together: ```link: { pre: preLink, post: postLink }```. Imagine the example having specified pre/post linking functions that logged their order respectively and you'd get this:

Outer - Controller
Outer - Pre Link
Mid - Controller
Mid - Pre Link
Inner - Controller
Inner - Pre Link
Inner - Post Link
Mid - Post Link
Second Mid - Controller
Second Mid - Pre Link
Second Mid - Post Link
Outer - Post Link

This gives us a couple ways to hook into the top-down life cycle: the directive controller **and** the pre-linking function. Pretty cool stuff.

15,848 Comments

@Kevin,

Your Mardown-fu is not lacking... my comments don't support Markdown, yet! That's on my queue of updates to make, I just haven't carved out the time to make it happen yet.

Thanks for clarifying the pre/post linking. To be honest, I've seen that in the documentation a hundred times and I never really understood the difference. Or, even if I understood the difference, I am not sure I understood the implications of doing it one way or the other. As such, I never messed with it. But, it sounds like it's just a timing issue, and nothing too much more complex than that (though timing does, of course, have implications in regard to DOM availability).

Awesome stuff!

1 Comments

This is amazing stuff to know. Explained with a great example. I was asked similar question in Interview today and I couldn't explain properly. This gives me more clarity.

2 Comments

Thanks for the great post as I was looking for an explanation of this. Unfortunately I found a case where all of this doesn't add up anymore. As soon as you start adding a templateUrl to an inner directive, it's link function is run last and not the link function of the outer directives. I can't really explain how this adds up now ...

2 Comments

@Jimmy,

Well I did find an explanation on the behavior in the angular source code. That does explain the behavior but unfortunately doesn't solve my problem where I'm looking for a way to detec when all directives on a page have loaded.

* Because template loading is asynchronous the compiler will suspend compilation of directives on that element
* for later when the template has been resolved. In the meantime it will continue to compile and link
* sibling and parent elements as though this element had not contained any directives.

https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/2cd5b4ec4409a818ccd33a6fbdeb99a3443a1809/src/ng/compile.js#L270-L272

15,848 Comments

@Jimmy,

Sorry I didn't get to your comment sooner - I actually just ran into this problem as well. And, the "best part" is that templateUrl only affects the link timing depending on when the outer directives have to be linked:

www.bennadel.com/blog/2810-directive-architecture-template-urls-and-linking-order-in-angularjs.htm

As long as the directive can be compiled *before* is needs to be linked (philosophically speaking, not technically - technically its always compiled first), then the templateUrl won't make a difference. But, if the outer directive is hidden behind something like an ngInclude, or is in the root of the rendered template, then it can get iffy.

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Ben Nadel