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Directives

Directives are classes which get instantiated as a response to a particular DOM structure. By controlling the DOM structure, what directives are imported, and their selectors, the developer can use the composition pattern to get a desirable application behavior.

Directives are the cornerstone of an Angular application. We use Directives to break complex problems into smaller more reusable components. Directives allow the developer to turn HTML into a DSL and then control the application assembly process.

Angular applications do not have a main method. Instead they have a root Component. Dependency Injection then assembles the directives into a working Angular application.

There are three different kinds of directives (described in more detail in later sections).

Decorators: can be placed on any DOM element and can be combined with other directives.
Components: Components have an encapsulated view and can configure injectors.
Viewport: is responsible for adding or removing child views in a parent view. (i.e. for, if)

CSS Selectors

Decorators are instantiated whenever the decorator CSS selector matches the DOM structure.

Angular supports these CSS selector constructs:

Element name: name
Attribute: [attribute]
Attribute has value: [attribute=value]
Attribute contains value: [attribute*=value]
Class: .class
AND operation: name[attribute]
OR operation: name,.class

Angular does not support these (and any CSS selector which crosses element boundaries):

Descendant: body div
Direct descendant: body > div
Adjacent: div + table
Sibling: div ~ table
Wildcard: *
ID: #id
Pseudo selectors: :pseudo

Given this DOM:

<input type="text" required class="primary">

These CSS selectors will match:

input: Triggers whenever element name is input.
[required]: Triggers whenever element contains a required attribute.
[type=text]: Triggers whenever element contains attribute type whose value is text.
.primary: Triggers whenever element class contains primary.

CSS Selectors can be combined:

input[type=text]: Triggers on element name input which is of type text.
input[type=text], textarea: triggers on element name input which is of type text or element name textarea.

Decorators

The simplest kind of directive is a decorator. Directives are usefull for encapsulating behavior.

Multiple decorators can be placed on a single element.
Decorators do not introduce new evaluation context.
Decorators are registered through the @Decorator meta-data annotation.

Here is a trivial example of a tooltip decorator. The directive will log a tooltip into the console on every time mouse enters a region:

@Decorator({
  selector: '[tooltip]', // CSS Selector which triggers the decorator
  properties: {          // List which properties need to be bound
    text: 'tooltip'      //  - DOM element tooltip property should be 
  },                     //    mapped to the directive text property.
  hostListeners: {       // List which events need to be mapped.
    mouseover: 'show'    //  - Invoke the show() method every time 
  }                      //    the mouseover event is fired.
})
class Form {             // Directive controller class, instantiated
                         // when CSS matches.
  text:string;           // text property on the Decorator Controller.

  show(event) {          // Show method which implements the show action.
    console.log(this.text);
  }
}

Example of usage:

<span tooltip="Tooltip text goes here.">Some text here.</span>

The developer of an application can now freely use the tooltip attribute wherever the behavior is needed. The code above has taught the browser a new reusable and declarative behavior.

Notice that data binding will work with this decorator with no further effort as shown below.

<span tooltip="Greetings {{user}}!">Some text here.</span>

Components

Component is a directive which uses shadow DOM to create encapsulate visual behavior. Components are typically used to create UI widgets or to break up the application into smaller components.

Only one component can be present per DOM element.
Component's CSS selectors usually trigger on element names. (Best practice)
Component has its own shadow view which is attached to the element as a Shadow DOM.
Shadow view context is the component instance. (i.e. template expressions are evaluated against the component instance.)

TODO(misko): Configuring the injector

Example of a component:

@Component({                      | Component annotation
  selector: 'pane',               | CSS selector on <pane> element
  properties: {                   | List which property need to be bound
    'title': 'title',             |  - title mapped to component title
    'open': 'open'                |  - open attribute mapped to component's open property
  },                              |
})                                |
@View({                           | View annotation
  templateUrl: 'pane.html'                |  - URL of template HTML
})                                |
class Pane {                      | Component controller class
  title:string;                   |  - title property 
  open:boolean;
  
  constructor() {
    this.title = '';
    this.open = true;
  }
  
  // Public API
  toggle() => this.open = !this.open;
  open() => this.open = true;
  close() => this.open = false;
}

pane.html:

<div class="outer">
  <h1>{{title}}</h1>
  <div class="inner" [hidden]="!open">
    <content></content>
  </div>
</div>

pane.css:

.outer, .inner { border: 1px solid blue;}
.h1 {background-color: blue;}

Example of usage:

<pane #pane title="Example Title" open="true">
  Some text to wrap.
</pane>
<button (click)="pane.toggle()">toggle</button>

Viewport

Viewport is a directive which can control instantiation of child views which are then inserted into the DOM. (Examples are if and for.)

Viewports can only be placed on <template> elements (or the short hand version which uses <element template> attribute.)
Only one viewport can be present per DOM template element.
The viewport is created over the template element. This is known as the ViewContainer.
Viewport can insert child views into the ViewContainer. The child views show up as siblings of the Viewport in the DOM.

TODO(misko): Relationship with Injection TODO(misko): Instantiator can not be injected into child Views

@Viewport({
  selector: '[if]',
  properties: {
    'condition': 'if'
  }
})
export class If {
  viewContainer: ViewContainer;
  view: View;

  constructor(viewContainer: ViewContainer) {
    this.viewContainer = viewContainer;
    this.view = null;
  }

  set condition(value) {
    if (value) {
      if (this.view === null) {
        this.view = this.viewContainer.create();
      }
    } else {
      if (this.view !== null) {
        this.viewContainer.remove(this.view);
        this.view = null;
      }
    }
  }
}

Dependency Injection

Dependency Injection (DI) is a key aspect of directives. DI allows directives to be assembled into different compositional hierarchies. Angular encourages composition over inheritance in the application design (but inheritance based approaches are still supported).

When Angular directives are instantiated, the directive can ask for other related directives to be injected into it. By assembling the directives in different order and subtypes the application behavior can be controlled. A good mental model is that the DOM structure controls the directive instantiation graph.

Directive instantiation is triggered by the directive CSS selector matching the DOM structure. The directive in its constructor can ask for other directives or application services. When asking for directives the dependency is locating by following the DOM hierarchy and if not found using the application level injector.

To better understand the kinds of injections which are supported in Angular we have broken them down into use case examples.

Injecting Services

Service injection is the most straight forward kind of injection which Angular supports. It involves a component configuring the injectables and then letting the directive ask for the configured service.

This example illustrates how to inject MyService into House directive.

class MyService {}                   | Assume a service which needs to be injected 
                                     | into a directive.
                                     |
@Component({                         | Assume a top level application component which 
  selector: 'my-app',                | configures the services to be injected.
  injectables: [MyService]           | 
})                                   |
@View({                              | Assume we have a template that needs to be
  templateUrl: 'my_app.html',                | configured with directives to be injected.
  directives: [House]                | 
})                                   |
class MyApp {}                       |
                                     |
@Decorator({                         | This is the directive into which we would like 
  selector: '[house]'                | to inject the MyService.
})                                   |
class House {                        |
  constructor(myService:MyService) { | Notice that in the constructor we can simply  
  }                                  | ask for MyService.
}                                    |

Assume the following DOM structure for my_app.html:

<div house>     | The house attribute triggers the creation of the House directive. 
</div>          | This is equivalent to:
                |   new House(injector.get(MyService));

Injecting other Directives

Injecting other directives into directives follows a similar mechanism as injecting services, but with added constraint of visibility governed by DOM structure.

There are five kinds of visibilities:

(no annotation): Inject dependant directives only if they are on the current element.
@ancestor: Inject a directive if it is at any element above the current element.
@parent: Inject a directive which is direct parent of the current element.
@child: Inject a list of direct children which match a given type. (Used with Query)
@descendant: Inject a list of any children which match a given type. (Used with Query)

NOTE: if the injection constraint can not be satisfied by the current visibility constraint, then it is forward to the normal injector which may provide a default value for the directive or it may throw an error.

Here is an example of the kinds of injections which can be achieved:

@Component({                         |
  selector: 'my-app'                 |
})                                   | 
@View({                              | 
  templateUrl: 'my_app.html',        |
  directives: [Form, FieldSet,       |
    Field, Primary]                  |
})                                   |
class MyApp {}                       |
                                     |
@Decorator({ selector: 'form' })     |
class Form {                         |
  constructor(                       |
    @descendant sets:Query<FieldSet> |
  ) {                                | 
  }                                  | 
}                                    |
                                     |
@Decorator({ selector: 'fieldset' }) |
class FieldSet {                     |
  constructor(                       |
    @child sets:Query<Field>         |
  ) { ... }                          | 
}                                    |
                                     |
@Decorator({ selector: 'field' })    |
class Field {                        |
  constructor(                       |
    @ancestor field:Form,            |
    @parent field:FieldSet,          |
  ) { ... }                          | 
}                                    |
                                     |
@Decorator({ selector: '[primary]'}) |
class Primary {                      |
  constructor(field:Field ) { ... }  | 
}                                    |