Quick Example:
There is a routed parameter (/Home/:isLoggedIn) that equates to true or false. (/Demo/#/Home/false) and a controller property
this.loggedIn = this.routeParams.loggedIn;
I have a view (Home.html) that has two elements, each with an ng-if attribute.
<div ng-if="home.loggedIn">
Logged In!
</div>
<div ng-if="!home.loggedIn">
Not Logged In...
</div>
If I navigate to /Demo/#/Home/true then the first element displays and the second does not.
If I navigate to /Demo/#/Home/false then the first element does not display NOR does the second one.
I would expect the !home.loggedIn parameter evaluate to true when the value of loggedIn is, in fact, false.
Any advice here?
It is quite obvious that he problem has its root to the fact that routeParams.loggedIn
is a string.
So the solution is quite obvious:
// Change that:
this.loggedIn = this.routeParams.loggedIn;
// To this:
this.loggedIn = this.routeParams.loggedIn === 'true';
But why the weird behaviour ?
Why work not showing anything when loggedIn
is 'false' ?
Well, here is why:
The ngIf
directive uses the following toBoolean()
function to convert its value to boolean:
function toBoolean(value) {
if (typeof value === 'function') {
value = true;
} else if (value && value.length !== 0) {
var v = lowercase("" + value);
value = !(v == 'f' || v == '0' || v == 'false' || v == 'no' || v == 'n' || v == '[]');
} else {
value = false;
}
return value;
}
If a string is passed to toBoolean()
it converts it to lowercase and checks (among other things) if it equals 'false' (in which case it returns false
). This is different than the default JavaScript implementation which interprets any non-empty string as true
when casting to boolean.
So, let's examine the two cases for both ngIf
s:
loggedIn === 'true'
ngIf1 evaluates home.loggedIn
--> 'true' (string)
ngIf1 passes this value through toBoolean()
toBoolean('true')
returns true (because it sees a string that can't match with any string considered falsy)
ngIf1 renders its content
ngIf2 evaluates !home.loggedIn
<=> !'true'
--> false (boolean)
(this happens because any non-empty string happens to evaluate to true)
ngIf2 passes this value through toBoolean()
toBoolean(false)
returns false
ngIf2 does not render its content
loggedIn === 'false'
ngIf1 evaluates home.loggedIn
--> 'false' (string)
ngIf1 passes this value through toBoolean()
toBoolean('false')
returns false (because it sees a string that is considered falsy
ngIf1 does not render its content
ngIf2 evaluates !home.loggedIn
<=> !'false'
--> false (boolean)
(this happens because any non-empty string happens to evaluate to true)
ngIf2 passes this value through toBoolean()
toBoolean(false)
returns false
ngIf2 does not render its content
So, this explains the "weird" behaviour (hopefully in an understandable way).
Problem is likely home.loggedIn is a string, when passed to ng-if it is probably evaluating and doing the conversion from string to bool to get the value "false" into false. In the expression evaluation before the value is passed through if you have !"false" that is actually false since any string is true, negating it becomes false.