Provide ui-router resolved resources without injec

Question

I'm working on an angular 1.5 app that makes heavy use of ui-router.

We define our states like this:

$stateProvider
  .state('jobs', {
    url: '/jobs',
    template: '<ut-jobs></ut-jobs>',
});

Notice that the template for this page is a simple angular directive rather than a template string (or templateUrl) with a separate controller. Our directive's controllers are defined inline, like this:

angular.directive('utJobs', () => {
  return {
    templateUrl: 'jobs.html',
    controllerAs: 'jobs',
    controller: [() => {
      console.log('jobs directive loaded!');
    }],
  }
});

This lets us keep things nice and tidy, since our directive's controllers are close to the directive definition.

We would like to leverage ui-router's resolve feature to help simplify our resource fetching. However, since our state controllers aren't kept in $stateProvider.state definitions, I can't figure out for the life of me how to access the result of resolve (job in the above example.) Is there some kind of $resolve service that I could inject into the directive's controller to access the resolved resources? Am I missing something obvious? Or is ui-router not support this?

Answer 1

You have two options depending on your version of UI-Router.

If you are using ui-router 1.0.0-beta or greater

ui-router 1.0.0-beta allows for routed components, so your resolves would map directly with your directive's scope binding.

$stateProvider
  .state('jobs', {
    url: '/jobs',
    resolve: {
      jobs: (JobsService) => JobsService.getAll()
    }
    component: 'ut-jobs'
});

Then bind the resolve property to your .directive:

angular.directive('utJobs', () => {
  return {
    templateUrl: 'jobs.html',
    scope: {
      jobs: '<'
    },
    controllerAs: 'jobs',
    controller: () => {
      // do what you will this.jobs
    },
  }
});

If you are not using ui-router 1.0.0-beta

You will have to create a controller on your state and pass in the resource from your resolve, and then pass that into your directive.

$stateProvider
  .state('jobs', {
    url: '/jobs',,
    resolve: {
      jobs: (JobsService) => JobsService.getAll()
    },
    controller: function($scope, jobs) {
      $scope.jobs = jobs;
    },
    template: '<ut-jobs jobs="jobs"></ut-jobs>',
});

In this case, the jobs object on $scope is getting passed to your directive:

angular.directive('utJobs', () => {
  return {
    templateUrl: 'jobs.html',
    scope: {
      jobs: '<'
    },
    controllerAs: 'jobs',
    controller: [() => {
      // do what you will this.jobs
    }],
  }
});

Notes/Reading

• Depending on the state of your app, I would recommend upgrading UI-Router (https://ui-router.github.io/blog/uirouter-1.0.0-beta.3/) to allow for component routing.
• I would recommend reading about components vs directives in the Angular docs (https://docs.angularjs.org/guide/component). Angular 1.5 exposed the .component syntax which is preferred.
• Todd Motto has done great writing on the subjective (https://toddmotto.com/rewriting-angular-styleguide-angular-2).