On running ionic g page pageName
I get generated .ts,.css and .html files.
Inside the .ts file I have a function called ionViewDidLoad(){}
and this is getting printed before my view appears.
This can be done in constructor itself I believe?
Can someone give me some reference of any blog or explanation about this function?
You're right, a lot of things could be done both in the constructor or in the ionViewDidLoad
and the result will be the same...
But the main difference between the constructor
and the ionViewDidLoad
is that the constructor
will be executed only once (when the component gets instantiated) but the ionViewDidLoad
method will be executed every time the view is entered (loaded).
For instance, if you want to load data from a remote datasource, if you do it in the constructor, the data will be obtained only once. If that data could change fast enough, a better approach would be to obtain it in the ionViewDidLoad
method, to be sure that every time the page is loaded, the latest data is being obtained and shown in the view.
Another important fact about the ionViewDidLoad
is that sometimes you want to interact with the DOM (maybe to initialize a map).
In that case, if you try to access the DOM in the constructor, you will notice that the DOM is not ready by that point and you won't be able to get the map element. The correct approach to do it would be inside the ionViewDidLoad
because at that point (just like the name says) the view was already loaded and the DOM is now available.
UPDATE:
Just like @graphefruit pointed out in the comment below, in the newest versions of Ionic 2, ionViewDidLoad
just fires if the page is not cached. ionViewWillEnter
or ionViewDidEnter
will be fired every time the page is entered.
constructor
is called before all, once per instantiation of the page, here you can do initialization that does not refer the HTML DOM
ionViewDidLoad
is called when the page DOM has been loaded, before than the page is shown, also a single time per page instantiation, here you can do initialization thet needs the HTML DOM to be ready
ionViewWillEnter
is called just before the page is shown, maybe multiple times if the page goes in background and returns, here you could refresh data if it can be changed in another page
ionViewDidEnter
is the same but called just after the page is shown, maybe multiple times if the page goes in background and returns, for instance you could show an alert just when the page become in front